Thirty Years Of Failed Climate Predictions – the video

On June 23 1988, NASA’s James Hansen testified before Congress and made very specific predictions about global warming. In this video I show how he got them exactly backwards, and how scientists and journalists continue to spread baseless misinformation.

430 thoughts on “Thirty Years Of Failed Climate Predictions – the video”

Indeed. Tony is low-key, humorous, and thought-provoking in rubbing their noses in their own doodoo. Thanks to both he & Toto, and AW for featuring it.

The thing that is most striking today is the complete lack of progress in Hansen’s, Schmidt’s, Trenberth’s, and Mann’s thinking, and down the line amongst the AGW climateers.

They can’t tie specific events like the 1988 drought and heatwave, or other extremes to CO2, yet they are very successful in giving everyone the impression they have. CO2 has increased since 1988, so why haven’t we had more frequent heatwaves like in 1988?

We’ve had somewhat similar conditions this year in May. Blazing hot under high UV index, worsening the growing drought in the SW. CO2 was not required for this to happen. CO2 wasn’t required for the 1920’s and 1930’s droughts and heatwaves either.

Ironically – June 23 also happens to be the anniversary of the day in 2014 when I made my first 100% solar activity prediction here at WUWT, which is described in the link above.

It took me about a year to figure out what the AGW crew hasn’t touched in 30 years, how the sun warms and cools the ocean, causing extreme events and climate change.

Jim Hansen’s main competence is in leading AGW cult followers and the unaware to a false belief – making ole Jimmy boy a false prophet indeed.

I do not know whether your comment is click bait, since it is difficult to contemplate that anyone is not aware of the plan.

The redistribution (in the form of climate reparation payments) is from the wealthiest developed nations (those in the West, particularly the USA) to the developing nations (China is classified as a developing nation, so too are nuclear capable counties such as India and Pakistan. China and India are so wealthy that they also have a space program).

Of course, much of the monies transferred to those countries is wasted by the globalist elite, and the corrupt governments of those countries, and is not received by the poor and needy.
Much is wasted on vanity/virtual signalling schemes rather than building gas or coal generators which would give the poor locals a chance to cook with electricity, and a chance to educate/study at night etc.

That is why President Trump said that the Paris Accord was a bad deal, since it made the USA the biggest payer, and that is why he pulled out of the Paris Accord.

The Paris Accord is about the transfer of money, not about CO2 reduction and that is why the likes of China and India (the number 1 and 3 emitters of CO2) get a free pass and are allowed to increase their CO2 emissions. Paris is about increasing CO2 emissions and transferring industry from the developed countries who have to cut back their CO2 emissions, to developing countries who are permitted to increase their CO2 emissions.

Ironically, the USA outside the Paris Accord will be the country that reduces its CO2 emissions the most, and by 2030, it will probably be only the third emitter with China and India ahead of it.

Not sure there is a plan to redistribute wealth. I’m suspicious of such accusations as they assume there is a leftist agenda, yet anywhere you look money and power are NOT going to “the people,” as a leftist agenda would have it, but to elites.

Just because the left promotes alarmism doesn’t mean they are the greatest beneficiaries of alarmist policies. Who benefits? I’d say the big agriculture companies do, as they’re able to appropriate lands from third-world countries, kick people off, strip the land bare and replant with monocrops to export to rich countries (palm oil, anyone?) Or, they can use the lands for “carbon credits,” still kick people off, and few notice. Overall we’re distracted by the MUCH BIGGER problem of global warming: who cares if land grabs happen, if we don’t control CO2 we won’t have a planet? Another beneficiary is the fishing industry, as overfishing is a huge problem that affects reef health but it generally ignored. How about dam builders who go to third-world countries, do they benefit? Can they sell dams as “clean” energy and then destroy the landscape and kick off inhabitants as part of the do-gooder CO2 fighting agenda? We could make a long list of those who benefit from the CO2 agenda, but at the top of the column of “who loses?” would be “the people,” meaning those at the very bottom of the economic ladder who might have only land to enable them to live decent lives. This land is being taken from them. This whole thing may be promoted by “the left” but it’s hardly a leftist agenda. And it’s hardly a scheme to redistribute wealth to third-world countries, unless it’s to grease the palms of those who are all-too-eager to sell out to to the interests of the rich nations.

I look around and I see that my well-off friends really don’t give a crap about curtailing emissions, unless it’s to buy a Prius or to use LED lightbulbs. Do they jet around? Yes. Drive here and there? Yes. Go on ocean cruises? Yes. Buy junk stuff for parties that just gets thrown away? Yes. The list goes on. But you folks with only land to feed you, we need that land for our good works, whatever those may be, and we know what’s best so hand your land over. And, thank you for helping to save the planet. THAT is the “agenda.”

“Not sure there is a plan to redistribute wealth. I’m suspicious of such accusations as they assume there is a leftist agenda, yet anywhere you look money and power are NOT going to “the people,” as a leftist agenda would have it, but to elites.”

Don, you may not quite understand the Progressive agenda. That most of the money and power go to a small group of elites IS the idea.

Support this, sycomputing, with some evidence? That’s not how I understand Progressives, not to be confused with leftists nor with fascists. I’m not arguing that wealth isn’t being siphoned from poor countries to rich elites; I’m arguing that the CO2 warming scam serves to distract us from how this is happening. Because it’s all for a good cause, isn’t it? Maybe we’re not so far apart after all.

DonJuan32 ::
You NEED to READ and…………. GET OUT MORE !
Read : UN Agenda 21 signed at Rio !
Also , Read : UN Agenda 2030 One-World-Government
and then re-read what you have written above !
NOTHING LIKE AS moderate AS YOU IMAGINED !

“Not sure there is a plan to redistribute wealth. ………………….. yet anywhere you look money and power are NOT going to “the people,” as a leftist agenda would have it, but to elites. ”

Don132, just what the ell does the leftist leader’s agenda to extort TRILLION$ of taxpayer dollars via the guise they are going to “redistribute wealth” have anything to do with aiding or empowering the “little people” of the world.

Don132, how many TRILLION$ of taxpayer dollars have been expended on The Great Society Program (The War On Poverty) since LBJ signed it into Law in 1964, …. and poverty is more rampant NOW, …… than THEN. The latest figure, more than 60 million Americans receiving “food stamps”, and most assuredly, most of them are living in government provided/subsidized housing.

Don132 – June 24, 2018 3:24 am

“ Overall we’re distracted by the MUCH BIGGER problem of global warming: who cares if land grabs happen, if we don’t control CO2 we won’t have a planet?”

Don132, claiming that you “were/are distracted” really doesn’t come close to explaining what “your problem” is. “DUH”, distractions are easily corrected/explained with very little effort by parties involved. Whereas, your problem concerning your nurtured religious belief (small ‘r’) of CAGW is an OFFENSIVE distraction to learned individuals which they can not easily correct you of.

So, ….. GETTA CLUE, …… iffen you and your “like-minded” ever learn to control atmospheric CO2 at the ppm quantity you stipulated, ……. then you and your “like-minded”, plus a billion or so other individuals, will not be around very long to enjoy your 280+- ppm CO2 atmosphere.

Holy smokes! Did I touch a nerve or what? Understand that I think the CO2 warming scam is just that. However, I don’t buy into the left/right dichotomy that says it’s about redistribution of wealth– except that it’s redistribution from poor to rich, yes. For those of you who say I need to get out more and read more, I suggest you look up a little documentary called “Everything is a Rich Man’s Trick.”

And it IS a distraction. And it DOES distract us from real problems: deforestation, land grabs, overfishing, etc. It’s like a magic trick: don’t look here, look there.

Now there fellas, I think we’re descending into name calling and insults just a wee bit, no? Yes, I may be wrong. Or, there may be something to what I say. So let’s discuss this as adults, or is that too much to ask? I’m willing to admit I’m wrong! Really! Just show me the facts.

You don’t need to be any kind of virtue signaller to buy LED lightbulbs, they are superior to both fluorescent and incandescent bulbs. A little expensive to buy initially but much brighter, longer lasting and use less energy.

LOL @ Pat FranK.
.
The government requires you to purchase liability insurance to drive an automobile on public roads. You call that “tyranny?”
.
The government requires you to purchase seat belts and catalytic converters on a new car. You call that “tyranny?”

You’re laughing at Pat Frank when you submit a Red Herring/False Equivalence logical fallacy objection to his argument? Shouldn’t you first pull the log out of your own eye before you point out the (nonexistent) log in Pat’s eye?

By the way, your website configuration isn’t complete – do fix it:

sunspotshurricanesandglaciers.com uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is only valid for *.sites.myregisteredsite.com Error code: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN

You mean because comparing the required purchase of liability insurance that covers someone else’s property in the case of an accident that you cause is the same thing as requiring you to buy a certain light bulb for your own house?

1) Liability insurance doesn’t cover someone else’s property. It covers the damage that you do. For example the medical bills you cause are not “property”.
.
2) There is no “law” requiring you to buy a certain light bulb for your house.

“Canada’s Energy Efficiency Regulations are published on the Natural Resources Canada website. The Canadian federal government banned the import and sale of 75- and 100-watt incandescent bulbs, effective 1 January 2014. On 1 January 2015, 40- and 60-watt bulbs were also banned.

You arent required to have liability insurance or wear a seatbelt on your own property (at least in my country). So those examples are indeed red herrings.

Whilst its true that no one is preventing you from installing incandescent bulbs, many countries (including mine) have made the sale of them illegal. The simplest way of forcing you not to have them. To call it tyranny is perhaps a stretch, but to just pretend it doesnt exist and equate it to public space rules is dishonest.

You are correct that people have a right not to wear seat belts. However, you cannot purchase a new car without them. Changing the subject from “purchase” to “use” doesn’t help you. Insurance companies are not the government, do you know the difference between the two?

sycomputing, the link you provided does not mandate the PURCHASE of any specific light bulb. Is English your 2nd language?
..
Please re-read this and get back to me: “It does not ban the use or purchase of incandescent bulbs.” (from your link)

Yea, the government wrote the law so that it was impossible to make an incandescent bulb that would meet the law.
But there was no law that specifically mentioned incandescent.
And the troll actually believes that relieves government of all responsibility.

From the Washington Post: “The federal government caught on to the high cost and energy consumption of lighting in 2007 and passed a law decreeing that lightbulbs must be three times more efficient by the year 2020. Congress didn’t outlaw the old-fashioned “Edison” lightbulb — so named because it’s what we’ve used since Thomas Edison’s time — but it may as well have, because no incandescent bulb comes anywhere close to meeting the new standard.

States then had the choice to accelerate the change, and California moved ahead with it. Starting this New Year’s Day, California retailers must exhaust their supply of incandescents and then sell only bulbs that meet the new standard, which means LEDs and compact fluorescent lightbulbs. The rest of the nation will follow in two years.”

Passing a law setting unnecessary standards so as to force a market outcome is just another way of forcing purchase by law.

CPP, are you really this ignorant, or do you just hope everyone else is.
There are laws on the books OUTLAWING bulbs that use more than a certain wattage. The only way to get a usable amount of light out of a bulb while still staying within the law is to use CFL or LED.

Alarmism isn’t specific to the left, but specific to people who when they don’t understand something, believe what they are told by people like themselves, rather than apply the proper due diligence towards listening to both sides of an issue before taking a position. This malady affects anyone who votes a party line for the parties sake and this includes most legislators.

Alarmism is a powerful motivator that the IPCC has applied to coerce conformance to their narrative. It was made even more powerful by being ‘justified’ with complicated sounding science promoted with the message “We know what we’re doing, so If you don’t believe us, you’re denying reality”. This is precisely why the left adopted alarmism in their demonization of Trump, as it facilitates promoting fear without requiring facts.

Of course, CAGW is a UN political goal and the scientific truth doesn’t matter. Unfortunately, many of the lemmings on the US left following their leaders are oblivious to the facts and the underlying motivation of the UN, as are many of their leaders.

Many of the scientists and other believers in the CAGW hypothesis are seriously conflicted between the scientific truth and their political identity which doesn’t allow them the flexibility to change their minds, and not even the scientific method can transcend this bias. This is why politics and science must never be allowed to mix again.

Thank you co2isnot evil for saying something calm and reasoned that directly addresses some of the thoughts I had. Apparently some replies jumped to the conclusion that I support CAGW, when I think it’s the biggest piece of pseudoscientific junk ever. The comments were not encouraging.

Nobody can differentiate Climate from Weather. What is the ideal Climate? Nobody knows. The idea that you can average temperature world wide is bogus as well. It is simply not a good indicator of what is going on. You can have an above average temperature for July, except for that tiny bit of frost, and you can kiss your climate good bye.

To me, climate change that matters if from the height of the Medieval Warm Period to the depths of the LIA during the Maunder Minimum.

But for really significant CC, you need the big swings, from the depths of the Last Glacial Maximum to height of the Holocene Climatic Optimum.

The little cycles within secular trends, such as those during our Current Warm Period, matter a little bit, as per the Dust Bowl, but are barely climatic phenomena. Average WX fluctuates in ~30 year cycles, but the Holocene has been fairly stable. The long term trend however is toward colder, so any little bit of warming is a good thing.

Felix, you don’t need a prolonged period of cold to starve to death or to set off a huge exodus of people. If there is a definition of ‘climate’ it is climate is general and weather is specific…. I agree with what you wrote.

Wow, was so distracted by the spinning about it almost eluded me! Makes me wonder if that Polo shirt is made of hair? And did he leave his sandwich board blazoned with Doom Is Nigh in the green room? Such a depressing way to view life, wonder how he wakes each day to face it.

According to Hansen, “something else” causes an initial warming. It doesn’t matter what the initial cause is, but C02, which is then released by said warming then kicks in, causing further warming. The Stupid, it burns. CO2, to these freaks, is like a fire-breathing dragon, which, once awakened, becomes a force unto itself. But, even within their own stupid logic, what stops it from becoming runaway? How does it go, sometimes suddenly, into cooling? Crickets.

A better analogy is that they want you to believe if you put on an extra blanket to make you a little warmer at night, that you will create run away warming under the blanket which will result in spontaneous human combustion.

Think of one of those silvery thermal IR blankets (which in practice substantially work by inhibiting convection – that is why they need to be wrapped around you, not say position a couple of feet from you)..

I only watched a little over three minutes, where Hansen mixed up the concepts of energy and heat — that’s where I stopped watching. It was too painful to proceed, after he said that CO2 absorbs heat.

NOTHING “absorbs” heat. To think otherwise is almost as absurd as saying, “I collected three pounds of work today.” Heat is NOT, in and of itself, a stuff that can be absorbed or “trapped”, just as work is NOT, in and of itself, a stuff that can be collected.

>>
No proper physicist would mix up the concepts of heat with energy.
<<

Really? The old units of heat are calories or BTUs. Both are convertible to joules. The SI unit for heat is the joule. The first law of Thermodynamics is an energy equation which includes both a heat term and a work term. You can use any energy unit for heat–including ft-lbs, Newton-meters, watt-seconds, ergs, etc.

Very good. Go to the head of the CO2 101 class. Now we are all learning something. Heat is not IR. IR is electromagnetic radiation or if you will, light; light that can’t be seen by the human eye. Everything in this universe eventually breaks down into subatomic particles. Heat itself is not a physical commodity. It is only a measure of the excitation or vibration of the molecules that it affects. Einstein’s equation of E =mc^2 only relates to the massive amount of energy contained within each particle of mass in relation to that mass. When something is burned, the chemical reaction produces different elements plus heat. If a carbon source is burned, CO2 is always produced along with heat. That heat eventually escapes to the rest of the universe through outer space. If it was possible to burn up all the non star materiel in the universe, the heat produced would eventually all find its way into the void of space. Because space is infinite, you cannot heat up outer space.

The heat death of the universe happens after both events of everything burning and /or everything decaying. When the heat death of the universe happens, it is NOT because there is less heat. The heat doesnt even disappear when the molecule that it is contained in ; decays into subatomic particles. Before that happens it just gets spread out to more and more of outer space. Outer space is NOT a perfect vacuum. A perfect vacuum is impossible. Because outer space is infinite you have an infinite amount of space absorbing a finite amount of heat. Thus the amount of heat per volume gets smaller and smaller as time goes on and the closer the universe gets to absolute ZERO. Nothing moves at absolute ZERO. However even absolute ZERO is impossible because even after every molecule decays to a subatomic particle, the space will still contain these subatomic particles. The heat even then is still there. Witness the average temperature of outer space is 2K. Even if all of outer space broke down to subatomic particles the average temp would still be a little bit above 0 K. ABSOLUTE ZERO would mean that there is no heat. But we have just demonstrated that the heat does not disappear. It simply gets spread out more and more over an increasing amount of space. Heat never stops moving. It is the lowest entity in the tree of the universe. You cannot go backward from heat. Heat can never be transformed into a materiel object because it is motion not matter. That motion can never be stopped completely. this concept is known as Entropy. Total entropy always increases.

The above article shows how Hansen and GISS a division of NASA have screwed up the concept of heat and light. Hansen seems to think they are equal or the same thing. That they ARE NOT can be easily shown by focusing the suns rays (using a lens) on a tiny spot on a leaf. The leaf will start burning producing heat. The earth’s atmosphere is composed of almost 99% O2 and N2 and slightly less than 1% argon. The rest of the atmosphere is trace gases like CO2 which is 410 ppm.

Imagine if you had a container outdoors (size doesnt matter) and put thermometers in there. Suck out all the air so that it is almost a vacuum. Assume that outdoor temp is anywhere from 10 to 30 Celsius (Actual temp doesnt matter). Put the outside air back in so that the pressure is the same. Then suck out all the CO2 and all the H2O. The temp will drop so little that you cannot measure the drop. The heat capacity of O2 and N2 is 4000 times the heat capacity of CO2. It will remain essentially the same temp as outside air. Wait until winter until outside air drops to below freezing. Eventually the container temperature will drop so that it eventually equals the freezing temp outside. So what happened? The remaining O2 N2 and argon radiated IR to the walls of the container which radiated it to the outside. Just like a thermos bottle does. Everything contains heat and everything radiates IR. The O2 N2 and argon is why the container’s temperature was the same as the outside. So the O2 N2 and argon lost enough heat until the temperatures inside and outside were the same. So that means that the O2 N2 and argon were holding more than 4000 times the heat that CO2 does. That means that O2 N2 and argon are also greenhouse gases. The only difference is that they do not absorb IR like CO2 and H2O do. But they do absorb other forms of electromagnetic radiation (the short wavelengths) . If they didnt do that they couldnt contain any heat within their molecules and they would be at absolute ZERO. So the physics is all wrong within the computer models. Sure CO2 contains a little heat and absorbs a little IR but again I repeat. The heat capacity of O2 and N2 is 4000 times the heat capacity of CO2.

I contend that any heat increase since 1950 is because the world’s population has tripled and the world’s energy usage has increased 5 fold.

Alan T, Its not a heat capacity problem! Many make this false assumption. It is not an ideal gas type situation either. CO2 DOES absorb infra red of specific wavelenghts which causes the molecule to vibrate (flex rapidly) and re-emit infra red. This temporary absorption retards the passage of IR photons and even emits them in different directions because of constant changing orientation and motion of the molecule.

There’s nothing worse than fighting the CAGW stuff alongside sceptics who dont know the basics. This wrong-headed stuff gets thrown back in our faces by the CAGW sude all the time.

Collisions dont count or else a room of air would heat up by itself. What happens when a CO2 molecule that is vibrating and then collides? No one really knows but collisions are happening every picosecond. Obviously vibrating CO2 collisions with N2 and O2 don’t increase heat or else again a room would heat up by itself. Don’t forget the floor and walls are also emitting IR. So I must conclude that this backradiation is very overhyped. Modest never even mentions it in his textbook.

“Collisions dont count or else a room of air would heat up by itself.”

This is a conceptual error. The temperature of the room does not rise because the total energy of all the molecules is constant, however there is definitely energy transfer between the molecules. This causes any excess heat at one point in the room to spread via collisions throughout the room, with the only difference in the end being the lapse rate between the ceiling and the floor causing a small difference due ot pressure.

Heating any parcel of air by one degree will see that heat eventually spread through the room until the energy transferred between molecules is equal (it does not stop). This continuous interchange causes Brownian motion.

You definitely get thermal equilibrium but no rise in overall temperature unless an external heat source. Deserts at night lose less heat if cloudy but they still lose heat and get colder than the day. Back radiation is overhyped or rainforest temperatures would go through the roof. They are actually cooler than desert temperatures.

Pat If the N2 and the O2 absorb the energy (IR photon) within the CO2 and H2O molecules by collision, then in effect they are active players in the greenhouse effect. So by collision the N2 and O2 are the halfbacks who got the handoff from the quarterback H2O and substitute quarterback CO2 who got the ball(photon) from the center(oceans and earth). Taking out the substitute quarterback (removing all CO2 from the atmosphere ) would only decrease the total heat capacity by 1/4000 . We would still have a greenhouse.
Putting more quarterbacks in the game (more CO2 ) let us say by doubling the CO2 only increases heat capacity by 2/4000.

As I understand it ,all materials above 0 K emit IR including the walls of a room . The CO2 must absorb these photons. Since collisions are happening (10^10 collisions per second) and (the speed of O2 at room temperature is 460 metres per second), then if the room temperature is the same temp as outdoors, then everything is more or less in equilibrium. All those collisions arent going to heat up the room even if you doubled the CO2.
As a further test construct a 4 sided building with no roof. Aim an infrared heater to the sky all day long assuming outdoor temperature stays the same during the length of your test. Because you didnt aim the heater at the walls they didnt receive any IR. The sky did however, but the temperature in the room would not change because an infrared heater cannot directly heat air. The CO2 and H2O are absorbing photons but since they are so small in number the air wont heat. Even if you had a CO2 blower, blowing CO2 in a vent into that 4 sided building with no roof, and aiming the infrared heater skyward all day long would not heat up that room very much. That would be a good test though but because the room is ventilated to the sky it would be interesting how much CO2 you would have to vent in to see any measurable temperature increase.

That again brings up my point about the rainforest in the tropics. Their average temperature is 27-28C whereas a hot desert average temperature will be 18-25C even though the maximum temperature in a hot desert gets much hotter than the rainforests. If H2O was such a forcing greenhouse gas, then the tropics would have had runaway warming 4 billion years ago.

Another point to consider is that
In the atmosphere, the O2 and N2 are also giving off energy. And the lapse rate proves that because there is less O2 and N2 at higher altitudes prove that O2 and N2 in the lower troposphere contain heat.

The final point that even Michael Modest admits is that CO2 and H2O emit less as moderate temperature increases.

So the bottom line is I agree that back radiation exists, but it is either too small to worry about or else the convection system provides a strong negative feedback. I contend that any land surface temperature increases have been urban heat island effects. Only Roy Spenser’ s satellite can provide the final word on temperature.

Alan, once the collisional energy goes into N2 and O2, that energy contributes to the general thermal blackbody temperature of the atmosphere.

So, CO2 converts IR into kinetic energy. That new kinetic energy goes into the blackbody thermal bath, and the air temperature rises if nothing else changes.

But of course, the climate is not static, and things do change. If convection increases a bit, or equatorial precipitation increases a bit, then that extra blackbody thermal input does not produce an increase in sensible heat.

The crux issue is that there is no physical theory of climate that can predict the result or resolve the effect of CO2 emissions. The perturbation is just too small — on the order of 1% change. Climate models can’t do it.

The climate itself shows nothing unusual. So far, the climate effect of CO2, if any, is invisible.

I have often wondered about Tropical Rain Forests. they would be a useful study subject.

How much solar is absorbed by the floor of the rain forest? Very little solar reaches the forest floor to be absorbed and reradiated.

Instead solar irradiance is largely absorbed in the canopy and powers photosynthesis. It would be interesting to know what percentage of the solar irradiance absorbed in the canopy gets reradiated.

So does K&T’s energy budget cartoon fall down with respect to tropical rain forests. If so then that is not an insignificant percentage of the land, and materially it is in the zone where most solar irradiance is absorbed, and the area where most energy is re-radiated/

“Obviously vibrating CO2 collisions with N2 and O2 don’t increase heat or else again a room would heat up by itself.”

Huh? No. What happens is that when more energetic molecules collide with less energetic molecules, some of the energy of the more energetic molecule is transferred to the less energetic molecule.

After the collision, the two molecules have the same total energy as before, but it it is distributed differently. The less energetic molecule is more energetic than it used to be, i.e., it is hotter, and the more energetic molecule is less energetic than it used to be, i.e.

The net result is that the entire system averages out. CO2 cannot be a reservoir of thermal energy. Indeed, ordinary experience confirms this analysis. In desert areas, it gets cold at night.

Desert areas only get cold at night if they are cloudless. The IR then escapes to outerspace. You definitely get thermal equilibrium but no rise in overall temperature unless an external heat source. Deserts at night lose less heat if cloudy but they still lose heat and get colder than the day. Back radiation is overhyped or rainforest temperatures would go through the roof. They are actually cooler than desert temperatures.

This is a common misconception among those on both side of the issue. There is no direct mechanism for de-energizing a CO2 molecule where any NET energy is converted between the internal state energy of its electron shells and the translational energy of molecules in motion.

The only possible mode for transferring energy from gas molecules is when a photon with slightly more or less energy than a primary line is absorbed or emitted by a GHG molecule in which case, a small amount of energy is either added to or removed from a rotational state which in principle can be considered a degree of freedom, relative to temperature, per the kinetic theory of gases and shared with other molecules upon collision. However; this operates symmetrically in both directions, thus the NET transfer of energy is zero.

There’s one other possibility for ‘thermalization’ which is when an energized CO2 or H2O gas molecule condenses upon an atmospheric water droplet in which case the state energy of the gas molecule becomes incorporated into the total state energy (temperature) of the liquid. We can see the effect of this in the 15u region, where at TOA, slightly less than 1/2 of what was absorbed is emitted in those absorption bands and this difference is what was ‘thermalized’. However; most of this is the consequence of energized water vapor condensing upon water droplets and not the absorption of energized CO2 molecules.

CAGW is impossible. CO2 and H2O emit less proportionally as the temperature goes up. Even though backradiation is real, the amount of CO2 backradiation is laughable. NASA arent even measuring it properly. If backradiation was that important you would see rainforest temperatures go through the roof.

Alan,
You said, “When something is burned, the chemical reaction produces different elements plus heat.” I quit reading at that point. I’m afraid that you aren’t a good counter to Hansen’s poor vocabulary.

Mr Tonality wrote:
“I contend that any heat increase since 1950 is because the world’s population has tripled and the world’s energy usage has increased 5 fold”
.
My comment:
I contend that our planet is
always warming or cooling,
and we have no clue
what the cause is,
other than guessing.

The urban heat island effect
should not affect the average
temperature except where
there was economic growth
near surface thermometers.
.
There are many other possible
man made causes of warming:
.
(1) Haphazard measurements,
where most of the world’s grids
have wild guess “temperatures”,
guessed by the bureaucrats
who predicted a lot of warming,
and they want their predictions
to come true,
.
(2) 1800s thermometers
that tended to read low,
.
(3) Data “adjustments”
may have created one-third
of the warming since 1880, and

(4) Dark soot on the snow and ice
of the Arctic, from continuous
coal and wood burning
in the Northern Hemisphere,
changes the albedo = local warming,
and we certainly have had
unusual warming in the Arctic.
.
My climate blog:http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com

You contend that any heat increase since 1950 has been due the world’s increased population and energy use.

It is possible that there could be some effect, but the major cause of the recent warming is due to reductions in atmospheric SO2 aerosol emissions due to global Clean Air efforts.

Follow me on this:

The Roman warming period ended circa. 450 AD, due to a series of large volcanic eruptions: the VEI5+ eruption of Opala (Kamchaika) in circa 430, the larger Plinian eruption of Pele in circa 450, a large unidentified VEI5 or 6 eruption in 536, the VEI6 eruption of Rabaul in 540, etc., etc.

When this series of eruptions abated, or ended, their SO2 aerosol emissions settled out of the atmosphere, resulting in the Medieval Warming period (circa 950-1250), because of increased solar radiation due the cleaner, more transparent atmosphere. Note that the warming occurred even when CO2 emissions too low to have any effect, at about 180 ppm.

This, in turn, was followed by the Little Ice Age (circa 1257), which began with the VEI7 eruption of Mount Rinjani in 1257, and was followed by a string of nine VEI6 eruptions, and at least 17 VEI5 and 77 VEI4 eruptions, culminating with the VEI7 eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815.

Again, as their sulfurous emissions settled out, temperatures began to naturally climb, on their way to temperatures equivalent to those of the earlier warming periods.

However, due to the Industrial Revolution, most of the volcanic SO2 aerosol emissions were replaced by anthropogenic SO2 emissions, so that those temperatures were not immediately attained, although the Earth was gradually warming up.

From 1900 to about 1970 (where reliable data became available), the warming rate was about .05 deg. C. per decade. After about 1970, due to reductions in SO2 aerosol emissions due to Clean Air efforts, the warming rate tripled, to about 0.16 deg. C. per decade.

Thus, the recent accelerated warming rate has been caused by the environmental movement!

With respect to temporary increases and decreases in anomalous average global temperatures, all are caused by increases or decreases in the amount of SO2 aerosol emissions in the atmosphere, either of volcanic origin (primarily), or anthropogenic.

For example, the super El Nino of 1997-1998 was caused by a 7.7 Megaton reduction in SO2 emissions, and the 2014-16 super El Nino by an estimated 30 Megaton reduction in emissions.

Since Earth’s temperature is largely controlled by random volcanic SO2 aerosol emissions, it will be impossible to predict future temperatures with any accuracy.

IMO, the LIA owed more to a series of solar minima rather than volcanoes, although they did reinforce the secular trend.

The Medieval WP recovered from the 1257 Samalas VEI 7 eruption. The MWP had a last gasp in the 14th century, although it began badly. There was a VEI 6 around 1280, but the other VEI 6 erputions you mention were in the real LIA, ie after AD 1400.

The Current WP has also suffered quite a few VEI 6 eruptions, such as Krakatoa (1883), Santa Maria (1902), Novarupta (1912) and Pinatubo (1991), although no VEI 7s as yet.

Which not to say that cleaning up the air hasn’t affected global temperature. It has probably had a bigger effect than CO2. But China and India are doing their bit to cool us off again by repolluting with SO2.

The link which you supplied to me earlier begins “Emissions of sulfur dioxide levels from China’s coal-fired plants dropped significantly OVERALL after a new pollution limit took effect in 2014, as shown by data from monitoring instruments AND a NASA satellite”.

SO2 scrubbers were undoubtedly built in advance and installed so as to comply with the new 2014 pollution limit.

Also, the SO2 reduction HAD to have happened; otherwise we would not have experienced the 2014-2016 super El Nino.

Fine Robert and Alan T, but how would YOU describe to a lay audience what CO2 does that delays exit of LWIR to space? Surely you can find enough wrong with the CAGW spiel that you dont get hung up on the minutae of the arguments. Teaching my grandson chemistry Im guilty of using Bohr’s simple structure of the atom to show how Na and Cl join to form table salt. I do tell him it is a very simplified stucture.

Downward backward IR DOES exist. The problem is that it has never been measured properly. NASA assumes emission of a blackbody of 1.
Emitted radiation = e * 5.67×10^-8 * T^4
where e = emission coefficient and K =Kelvin degrees
The Stefan Boltzmann law is only valid if the emitting source is a blackbody. Therefore e is always = to 1 . The e was never in the original equation and thus was always = to 1 because the equation is only valid for blackbodies. The reason why is that gases like CO2 and H2O actually emit less proportionally as the temperature goes up. Everybody then tries to use the equation for non blackbodies. They then put an emission number 0<e<1 where e is the emission. The problem is how do you know what e is? Lab experiments can determine it for each material but if you polish the surface, e changes . On top of that the emission itself changes proportionally as the temperature goes up. So there is no equation that gives you the exact emittance. Modest gives the Voight profile equation but that assumes thermal equilibrium and even that equation is unsolveable. The best that industry has is the Modtran computer program. Some researchers give a value of e =0.002 for CO2. Others give 0.2

So back to the problem of how to explain this to your son?

Simply tell him that even though CO2 does absorb IR coming from the oceans and land; the amount absorbed is so small and the amount emitted is too small to worry about. Explain to him that NASA has not shown how downward backward IR has actually increased any temperature at the surface and that this whole scare actually does not have the science to back it up. Tell him that O2 and N2 that make up 99% of the atmosphere have 4000 times the heat capacity of CO2 and that they are the real greenhouse gases.

The very small temp increase in last 68 years of 0.7C is explained by the world's population increase from 2.5 billion to 7.6 billion and the world using 5 times the amount of energy it used in 1950. Your son's textbooks need to be changed because the sea level rise is the same as it has been for the last 14000 years and Greenland , Antarctica and the Arctic periodically lose ice and then gain it all back. So nobody will drown because of rising seas and no one will burn up because of rising temperatures. We have been scaring little kids for 30 years because of 1 man James Hansen.

All I am saying is that the total amount of energy burned and used is
likely the amount that is showing up in the surface temperature records all caused by the Urban heat effect. The increase in temp is only 0.7 C in 68 years. Couldnt all of this be explained by the urban heat effect? If the satellite records definitely show an increase then I am wrong. However I think we need 10 more years of satellite records to prove this one way or the other.

It is a quite easy calculation. Take all the energy that we are using on earth (240,000 TWh), calculate its power (27.4 TW) and suppose that we just harvest 7.4 TW for mechanical work from it. That leaves you 20 TW max. for heating the surface. You will end up with a power of around 0.04W/m^2 coming from our energy usage. That will by no means increase temperature by 0.7 deg C. It‘s probably much less than a tenth of it.

Another example. Take a candle (40 Watts) and place it in yor 1,000 m^2 garden. That gives you the same power per area. Do you believe the candle raises the temperature in your garden by 0.7 deg C?

@Alan Tomalty June 23, 2018 10:16 pm;
Please don’t make me do this again, as you are repeating your unjustified WAG from another thread where I also corrected you.

“All I am saying is that the total amount of energy burned and used is
likely the amount that is showing up in the surface temperature records all caused by the Urban heat effect.”

The sum total of all the energy produced through human activity in one year is equal to the amount of solar radiation striking the surface of the earth in one hour. This is far too little to have any appreciable effect on urban temperatures. Land use (misuse) and local construction materials are the primary driver for UHI.

“…of it is re-absorbed, and op of that the emission itself changes proportionally as the temperature goes up.”

Well, technically true but the emissivity of dark grey iron changes very little between 0 and light-yellow-hot at 900 C. In short, your proposed effect is insubstantial. The emissivity of CO2 at a peak absorption frequency is as good as a back body. If you could look up from the ground seeing only IR, the sky would be nearly white because the virtually all the IR is absorbed and 50% radiated back down. That which comes down, is re-radiated sooner or later, and re-absorbed, with 50% of it re-emitted back to the ground at some angle.

Round and round it goes. losing 50% each time. The average number of trips a photon makes before leaving is 1.8. This is known as the optical thickness of the atmosphere. See Miskolczi’s publications for the calculation details. It hasn’t change in 60 years because as CO2 is added to the atmosphere, water vapour is removed. And that is my answer to Garys ‘s question about how to teach this subject.

Graduation day here in Beijing. At least some of them have learned how to think and analyse. They have been taught not to make assumptions about such matters. For such an extraordinary change in appearance, the emissivity changes very little.

No one knows what the emissivity is for gases. You get a different figure for every researcher on the subject.
If NASA could measure the back radiation properly then this could get resolved. The problem is the only valid equation to use is the Voigt profile. Modest says there is no closed form solution for that equation. It is too complicated to reproduce here. I will simply quote what Michael Modest said in his textbook on Radiative Heat Transfer.
The most important sentence with respect to CO2 in Modest’s textbook on page 315( the chapter on gases) is the following. I quote

” we note that ,at moderate temperatures , the rotational partition function causes the line strength to decrease with temperature as 1/T or 1/(T^1.5), while the influences of the vibrational partition function and of stimulated emission are very minor . ”

What this means to me is that at the temperatures we see in our troposphere, the vibrational effect is small for gases and the rotational effect decreases with temperature increase.

On page 309 Modest says and I quote “while symmetric molecules such as CO2 show a rotational spectrum only if accompanied by a vibrational transition.”

So Modest seems to be saying that even though CO2 absorbs IR, the line strength of absorption/emission at moderate temperatures is too weak to worry about, especially since the rotational partition strength of the spectrum decreases with temperature increase. So not only CAGW is impossible, it seems that AGW is impossible to any significant degree (pun not intended).

If only Michael Modest would clear this up, but I suspect he is too afraid. Such is the strength of the CO2 inquisition.

Fine Robert and Alan T, but how would YOU describe to a lay audience what CO2 does that delays exit of LWIR to space?

I cannot speak for Alan T, but speaking for myself, I would never say that CO2 “delays exit of LWIR to space”. This is another version of the “slowed cooling” claim, which I also would never say. First, I am NOT convinced that there is enough CO2 in the atmosphere to have such a “delaying” or “slowing” effect. Second, I am NOT convinced that this “delaying” or “slowing” manner of speaking is the correct way to speak about what CO2 does.

The difference between heat and radiation is not mere minutia. Physics is about precision, no ? I have been led to believe that here, of all places, is where we are very focused on minutia — the details — the precision of language — the precision of MEANING.

Alas, I’m still trying to get the minutia straight, and it seems that on this level of detail is where the greatest difference in people’s understanding exists, and where the greatest amount of argument happens.

Heat cannot be trapped. Heat is not a substance.

Energy is not a substance. Energy cannot be trapped.

Energy might better be thought of as motion, where heat is a particular kind of change in motion at a very small scale.

My impression is that the largest mass of gas that delays or slows energy release, in relation to energy input by the sun, is the bulk of Earth’s atmosphere, which is nitrogen and oxygen. CO2, in its very small concentration, distributes some energy to this bulk, and cools this bulk, but it does NOT “delay” or “slow” the cooling of this bulk.

If NASA could measure the back radiation properly then this could get resolved. The problem is the only valid equation to use is the Voigt profile. Modest says there is no closed form solution for that equation. It is too complicated to reproduce here. The most important sentence with respect to CO2 in Modest’s textbook on page 315 is the following. I quote

” we note that ,at moderate temperatures , the rotational partition function causes the line strength to decrease with temperature as 1/T or 1/(T^1.5), while the influences of the vibrational partition function and of stimulated emission are very minor . ”

What this means to me is that at the temperatures we see in our troposphere, the vibrational effect is small for gases and the rotational effect decreases with temperature increase.

On page 309 Modest says and I quote “while symmetric molecules such as CO2 show a rotational spectrum only if accompanied by a vibrational transition.”

So Modest seems to be saying that even though CO2 absorbs IR, the line strength of absorption/emission at moderate temperatures is too weak to worry about, especially since the rotational partition strength of the spectrum decreases with temperature increase. So not only CAGW is impossible, it seems that AGW is impossible to any significant degree (pun not intended).

If only Michael Modest would clear this up, but I suspect he is too afraid. Such is the strength of the CO2 inquisition.

Nearly the whole theoretical temperature increase caused by CO2 comes from the effective emission height that is being elevated by higher CO2 concentrations. Higher emission height means lower temperature, means less energy radiated to space, means more heat remaining in atmosphere. This should increase the heat top down because convection moves it upwards but radiation doesn’t manage to get rid of it.

This is the theory. It does not need any back radiation which – I believe- doesn‘t exist to a significant extent because any theoretically small back radiation would be reabsorbed, thermalized and transported upwards again.

This, by the way, leaves ocean warming solely to conduction between a small mass of air and an incredibly huge mass of water. Good luck with that Mr. Global Warming!

Paul……NOT if you consider volcanoes !
The INTERIOR of the Earth is still VERY HOT !
Continual Continental-plate Movement means that there is
continual exposure of magma to the water and heat transfer
obviously occurs.
It is probably sub-sea volcanic action that is melting the ice
in West Antarctica. I have NOT seen it for myself but I have seen
it’s effects on the ice in Iceland and I think that it is a distinct
possibility that something similar is occurring in Antarctica.

YES ! That is WHAT I remember I was taught long ago !
The Sun irradiates the Earth and is the major source of heat.
The “photons” are the “energy bundles” that transfer the Sun’s energy to Earth as LIGHT.( electromagnetic radiation ).
Energy is un-trappable…it becomes motion in the molecules.
Heat can be measured with a thermometer and
increased gas motion as increased pressure in a closed vessel.
Solids ( surface ) heat and transfer that heat by conduction.
Gases near the surface absorb that heat by conduction
and spread it by convection .
Radiation ( light ) from those molecules releases the energy and
the motion reduces by the equivalent amount.
….and that radiation (light ) eventually goes back into space !
So ,the whole atmosphere is what constitutes
“the greenhouse gases”.
Water Vapour and CO2 are both MINOR constituents
of that total mass.
Mind you……….THAT is only what I remember
ps….and it all happens at the speed of light or damn nearly !

It is about minute detail. As the saying goes, the devil is in the detail. The warmist always wish to gloss over the details, and that is indeed why the theory of the GHE is named on a process that does not apply to greenhouses.

The precise wavelengths, and the precise absorption characteristics of the gases in our atmosphere and water are extremely material and need to be considered in fine detail if one has the slightest chance of understanding how the radiant GHE works, if indeed it does anything at all, and whether increasing the amount of CO2 is likely to lead to any significant change in temperature.

Accordingly one must consider the wavelengths at which CO2 absorbs photons, it has 3 absorption windows (at wavelengths 667, 1388, 2349 cm-1) corresponding to 3 different vibrational states of the molecule.

However, for the main part these absorption windows overlap with water vapour, and materially they are equivalent to a cold BB temperature/spectrum.

Whilst of course, photons do not have a temperature, their wavelength/frequency is related to the temperature of the emitting surface.

Apart from the Antarctic and the top of Everest/the Himalayas (which is not really at the surface but rather at about 8.8 km up in the atmosphere) there are no surface emitters that can supply photons of the right wavelength that would be absorbed by CO2.

This means that it is very difficult to conceive how the GHG effect, if it is happening at all, can happen at low altitude. What is the source of the necessary photons (ie., those of a wavelength that fall within the CO2 absorption bands), and where do these photons come from?

It would appear that if the GHE effect exists at all, it would have to be at high altitude (since the photons need an equivalent BB temperature of around – 50 to – 80 deg C to be be of the right wavelenth that they would be absorbed by CO2), and there are relatively few CO2 molecules at high altitude so there are not many CO2 molecules to perform the absorbing and the re-radiation).

One also has to consider the energy states of the atoms, relative to one another, and whether photons from DWLWIR have sufficient energy that they can truly raise the energy state of other atoms. Which of the atoms are capable of being raised to a higher energy state, and precisely where are these atoms in Earth’s atmosphere?

PS. I have not checked the equivalent BB temperature of the CO2 absorption bands and the – 50 to – 80 deg C equivalent temperature is stated merely from recollection, but I believe it to be sufficiently accurate to illustrate the point that the oceans and the surface of the land, which have an average temperature of around 15 deg C, cannot even taking into account statistical spatial spread be emitting photons at the necessary wavelength that they fall within the main absorption bands of the CO2 molecule.

If one goes back to the K&T energy budget cartoon, the surface of the planet is emitting at a lot of LWIR, but (ignoring spatial statistical spread) the photons are not of the wavelength that would fall within the narrow absorption bands of CO2. It is difficult to conceive how that cartoon rightly portrays what is happening since the detail is conspicuous by its very absence.

“since the photons need an equivalent BB temperature of around – 50 to – 80 deg C to be be of the right wavelength that they would be absorbed by CO2”
This was the subject of a long argument here recently. It just isn’t true. Here is a plot of observed spectra at Barrow, Alaska over a thawing ice field (click to enlarge)

I’ve marked the characteristic 15 μm line for CO₂ in red. The bottom spectrum is for downwelling IR at surface. The green arrow shows the intensity of 15 μm , which is near peak. The top dotted curve is BB for 270K, and you can see that it is near peak for that, and will be so for 280 K or even 290 K.

The top spectrum is TOA looking down, and you can see that most 15 μm radiation has been absorbed, since the intensity is now what you expect for emission at TOA temperature.

Of course Barrow is a fairly cold place and without doing a lot of research, I do not know the temperature of the polar ice sheet, but it may well fit in with the general thrust of the point that I was making since it is obviously a cold surface.

I am not disputing the CO2 absorption bands, nor that there are photons in the atmosphere of the requisite wavelength, which potentially could be absorbed by CO2, I am merely querying the source,

I do not consider your plot addresses that issue, at least not without a series of spectral images looking down taken say every 200 metres upwards to 20 km.

I clicked your link but could not locate discussion of the point that I raised.

Materially, K&T refer to “greenhouse gases” as the source of the LWIR, not to CO2, and perhaps this is deliberate because it is probable that it is water vapour, not CO2 that is doing almost everything.

This can be seen when the mid atmosphere is measured, it shows that CO2 is radiating a lot above the Tropopause (assisting the passage of LWIR to TOA and thence to the void of space), but very little below the Troposphere.

See, where the dotted line marks the Tropopause (source as per annotation on plot).

You will note from this that the CO2 radiative window is closed at the precise point where K&T are suggesting that the DWLWIR emanates and flows downwards. With this shut door, it would appear difficult for CO2 to cause more DWLWIR to reach the surface, and if anything it is more likely to simply aid the outward passage of LWIR to TOA and thence to space.

Quite simply below the Tropsphere convection is king and rules, and above the Troposphere radiation takes over and becomes the more dominant factor. Materially, CO2 does not appear to be doing anything of significance in the lower atmosphere below the Tropopause. It would appear what little effect it has in this lower region is already fully saturated.

PS. There appears to be so many things wrong with the K&T energy budget cartoon. The minute detail is missing, and this becomes very important when one is looking for a possible energy imbalance of no more than circa 1 to 2 W/m2

“According to K&T, the back radiation is shown as emanating from the Tropopause, viz, from the cloud layer”
No, it’s just a diagram. It isn’t meant to indicate a spatial level where the DWLWIR originates. In fact, in the frequencies most strongly absorbed, most DW received comes from gas quite close to the surface. But the heat that it supplied was replenished by radiation from a little further up, etc. The fact that they show one flux doesn’t mean that a photon had a clear path.

And that is another way of seeing the GHG effect. When there is more of it, DWLWIR comes from lower, warmer levels.

It’s just not true that convection is king, else hang-gliders would be soaring everywhere. The air at normal lapse rate is convectively stable.

Nick Stokes: what emissivity would we expect from CO2 at TOA 20km up at Barrow, Alaska, which, since the troposphere is much shallower there, would put the emissions elevation well into the stratosphere? I wonder if we’re making assumptions about what those graphs are telling us?

Thanks Nick, for once. A useful reply. I really don’t get all the arguments about the radiational mechanism of greenhouse gases — as an engineer myself, it’s not particularly difficult. My arguments are that alittle warming is good, and CO2 as plant food is particularly good. The truly bad thing about this is how it is being politicized, money squandered and the mass of people hoodwinked.

“Fine Robert and Alan T, but how would YOU describe to a lay audience what CO2 does that delays exit of LWIR to space?”

Gary Pearse, as they say, ……… a picture is worth a thousand words ….. and iffen you want an effective way of explaining to most any layperson how IR energy is conducted, convected and/or radiated from/to the surface of the earth, …. from/to the gas molecules (CO2) “delayment” in the air, …..and then eventually to outer space, …….. tell them to go to an Amusement Park or a Shopping Center and put a quarter in a Pin Ball Machine ……… and “shoot” [LWIR energy] all 5 of the steel “ball bearings” out of the “slot” [earth’s surface] onto the playing “surface” [earth’s atmosphere] ….. and to pay close attention to why those “ball bearings” don’t immediately roll down the playing “surface” [earth’s atmosphere] into the dark “return” slot [outer space.]

Put more quarters “in” and repeat the “play” and you will get different results every time. Just like when LWIR transfers through earth’s atmosphere.

He’s a good speaker, no question. He puts ideas simply and in a sequence that the listener can easily follow, but oh, my, the errors in fact and argument are almost too many to list.

To this observer, the biggie is when he talks about temperature increase at the end of a glacial period preceding the rise in atmospheric CO2. He says that a change in solar input causes a bit of warming and icecap melting (correctly, or maybe it’s a drop in albedo caused by dust on the ice – thanks Javier), and then says (correctly) that warmer oceans discharge CO2, and then he goes on to describe a classic runaway spiral “more CO2 => more warming => more CO2 => more warming => more CO2 …….. ad infinitum”

Carefully omitting to note that the increase in atmospheric CO2 and increase in global temperature both stop, quite suddenly when deglaciation is complete. What is supposed to have caused that sudden halt in an unstoppable death spiral?

In my opinion, that is the Achilles heel of the whole alarmist movement: the assertion that increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are both a response to warming and a cause of warming. I first saw this assertion clearly articulated in exactly those words by Steven Mosher in a comment here at WUWT, and it hit me that he was describing an inherently unstable situation. A world in which there could never be even the possibility of a stable climate.

If it were true, the “stable” climate that Hansen wants to preserve is no more stable than a pencil standing in its point. Because of the huge heat capacity of the oceans, the analogy is more like a pencil standing on its point in a bowl of molasses. It must fall over in time, and nothing can stop it.

Perhaps climate science will come up with a counter-argument to this objection. They did that when they finally had no choice but to acknowledge that there is natural climate variation, and they brought it into their world view. They even use it to explain why warming projected by models is less than observed (“it’s a period of natural cooling, and guess what? -we predicted it”).

The alarmist movement is entirely based on the theory that increased CO2 causes global warming, whose effects will be catastrophic. But it’s not a real theory because it changes every time it encounters evidence it can’t explain. It’s more like a very good, fast-talking confidence trickster than a scientific theory. Or a virus that mutates when its victims start to build up resistance. Because it’s infected so many, you could say it’s a….

There is an even greater problem than the CO2-second problem. It is that the putative warming is largely supposed to be from a water vapour positive feedback. While the argument of ‘warming followed by CO2 followed by more warming’ is plausible (causing some to believe), they perhaps forget that the major warming is supposed to come from water vapour increases forced by CO2-heating initiated by solar or dust warming. That water vapour forcing doesn’t exist. In fact, it is pretty obvious from measurements that the atmosphere dries out when CO2 rises, preserving the optical thickness at a stable 1.8.

Quite how this happens is still open to speculation but the fact of it is sure. There is obviously FAR too much out-of-ice-age-warming to be explained by CO2 alone, and the water vapour feedback is very low, perhaps even negative. Taking the supposed heating power of a doubling and re-doubling of CO2, there is not nearly enough forcing to drive the temperature up 12 C and lift the planet out of an ice age. In short, the theory is fabulous in the classic sense. It is a fable. The math is wrong. If CO2 going from 200 ppm to 290 (less than +50%) can raise the temperature 12 degrees, why doesn’t 290-410 (+40%) raise it 1 C? Hansen’s hypothesis is flawed.

Why are you showing the trend since 1979, when I spoke of since 2012. In fact, it’s flat since 2007 and rising since 2012. From 1979 to 2012, a new low was made within every five year period. But that has not been the case since 2012. Arctic sea ice extent has stopped going down, and is going up.

I don’t know why so many people are concerned about a metric who’s value is in the short term determined a great deal by which way and how much the wind blows and wave action. The period of the most precipitous drop in the 2012 extent coincided exactly with a powerful Arctic storm which hit August 4 to 8 during the annual melt.

For the same reason that estimated global atmospheric temperature is used as the climatology gold standard instead of a combination of heat capacity and mean sea level surface pressure — climatology is an immature science with a bunch of c-rate charlatans running the show.

Because like all trolls, he specializes in cherry picking data.
1979 was the end of one of the coldest periods in the last 100 years.
Of course ice has decreased since then. But it has nothing to do with CO2.

The reconstruction of arctic ice extent over 100 years does not show any significant difference between modern ice conditions and those from 80 years ago. Doesn’t seem that we have an unprecedented decline there. Even if we did, why shoud we worry in the first place?

The claim of a 40 year decline in ice extent due to CO2 and the fear mongering about it is even worse than cherry picking. There is no proof whatsoever for this hypothesis. This is just belief that if there were no other reasons it could be CO2 and if it turns out very bad it could be bad for some polar bears. How did you say? If my auntie was a man she’d be my uncle, right?

Even on your plot, Arctic Sea Ice today, is greater than it was in 2007/8 and in 2012.

Your plot seems to support what Felix said.

Of course, sea ice may have declined somewhat since 1979, but 1979 was a peak as Vinnikov (the lead author of the IPCC AR1) showed when setting out 20th century Arctic Sea Ice.

More significantly, it you wish to put something in its proper perspective, for over 90% of the Holocene the amount of Arctic Sea Ice has been considerably less than it is today. Sea Ice has undoubtedly been growing since the Holocene Optimum, and according to the IPCC CO2 has remained approximately constant throughout the Holocene, save since the end of the 19th century/early 20th century.

CO2 does not explain the Arctic Sea Ice as seen throughout the Holocene.

Ya know, if it wasn’t for baseless misinformation they would have no information at all. It is sad that these people are so desperate for calamity and misery to be visited upon people that they are absolutely blind to reality. The planet Earth is such a wondrous miracle, and all they can do is doomcry and attempt to terrify children and the easily duped with their apocalyptic stupidity, all the while living lives of luxury consuming as much energy, in all its forms, as they can. Hypocrites.

30 years and the arctic sea ice is getting thicker, the planet hasn’t melted, crop yields continue to increase, and the planet is getting greener, thanks to atmospheric CO2 enrichment! It’s all good… and getting better!

One of Tony’s most entertaining recent youtube videos is “How Did We Survive The 1970s?”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qxQ7Bw7wbw
By the end, and the last “But they were just getting started…”, I was almost in tears of laughter.

Neither is 1980-2010. The red is the standard 1951-80 base. The black isn’t anything standard. Folks who love digging up old graphs don’t seem to have any curiosity about what they really represent. Hansen in 1981 appreciated well that in averaging readings should be combined using anomalies. But he doesn’t seem to appreciate that they should have the same anomaly base. So he mixed the cells relative to their own averages relative to what readings they had. The bad thing about that is that it affects the trend, usually reducing. That’s why by 1987 he was using a standard period, even though it is a difficulty when stations don’t have data in that period.

Of course, there are other issues in the comparison, which folks like Heller ignore. The black is derived from what was available at the time – a few hunderd land stations, mostly NH. The red is combined land/ocean, and with much better coverage on land.

You can forget about the anomaly base period being an issue when you are comparing two individual years to each other. As the anomaly base changes over time, those two years should only change relative to the “average” but not change relative to each other. The only way to do that is to adjust the data and that was the point of the figure above.

“Hansen in 1981 appreciated well that in averaging readings should be combined using anomalies”

Hansen in 1981 also produced the temperature chart showing the MWP that the IPCC used in their first assessment report. IS it no a surprise that Hansen did not object to M Mann’s publication of a temperature chart in MBH98 that overturned all the work of previous investigators, claiming to show there was no MWP?

Hansen is quite a character. I do appreciate however his signal contribution to the discussion by publishing that iconic chart that is used by skeptics as an easy rebuttal of Mann’s hockey stick. Without Hansen’s reconstruction (based on decent proxies and measurements) it might be harder, and take longer, to show that MBH98 was primarily a series of mathematical errors and cherry-picked, inappropriately weighted proxies.

For those interested in Hansen’s “other life” see his (first?) 1969 paper announcing the catastrophic end of civilisation caused by the coming, inevitable, man-caused global cooling. (Remember “global dimming”?)

“Hansen in 1981 also produced the temperature chart showing the MWP that the IPCC used in their first assessment report.”
There is just endless nonsense here. Hansen only had 1 paper in 1981, and it didn’t have anything like that. I don’t believe Hansen has ever published a paleo study of his own.

“For those interested in Hansen’s “other life” see his (first?) 1969 paper announcing the catastrophic end of civilisation caused by the coming, inevitable, man-caused global cooling.”
I don’t believe he published any such paper in 1969 either. Or at any time.

Nick is probably right that these plots are based upon different base periods. Whether that is material will depend upon the anomaly for each base period.

Herein lies one of the problems with anomalies. It renders meaningful comparisons very difficult since one needs to convert all the data back to absolute temperatures so that like with like can be compared.

What all of this clearly demonstrates is that we need to reassess by remeasurement what is going on, so that we can produce a data set that is fit for scientific purpose and so that like for like can be directly compared.

I frequently point out that we should select the best say 200 sited stations where there have been no significant environmental changes since the 1930s and which are preferably located well away from reservoirs, lakes, oceans etc which might attenuate results.

We then retrofit these prime stations with precisely the same LIG thermometers (calibrated in the same manner as was done, at that station, in the past) in the same type of enclosure (volume, paint etc) as used by each station (on a station by station basis), and then measure temperature using precisely the same practice and procedures (eg., TOB) as was used at the station in the question in the 1930s.

We will then obtain modern day RAW data that can be directly compared with the station’s own historic RAW data for the 1930s/1940s without the need for any adjustment whatsoever.

No fancy statistically models will be used, there will be no attempt to compile a global or hemispherical wide construct, no spatial adjustments made. We will simply draw up a list of the 200 stations and note the temperature change at each station, one by one.

In that manner we will be able to make a meaningful like for like comparison and we will readily see whether there has generally been warming since the highs of the 1930s/1940s and if so by what sort of order.

Can’t help but observe that Nick never goes to Tony’s blog to directly challenge his representation of the facts but has always been content with sniping from here. Tony has posted the graph in question many times over the years.

Nick, they are both GISS temp…GISS says the temp history that Hansen used to program his computer models was wrong…..GISS changed it to the correct temp history after Hansen made his prediction
You have 2 choices…
1. Hansen was right….and GISS was wrong to adjust the temps
2. GISS is right…and Hansen’s predictions are garbage

GISS says if Hansen had used the correct adjusted temp history….Hansen would be off the chart warmer

This is what NASA says….
“The simple procedure used in 1981 was refined as documented in Hansen and Lebedeff (1987), using 8000 grid boxes to allow mapping and analysis of regional patterns.”
so by 1988, when he testified, Hansens computer model was the official GISS temp

Both Hansen and Phil Jones note the problem with the SH. There is simply not sufficient spatial coverage and not sufficient historic data. As you know Phil Jones quite candidly stated in the Climategate emails that much of the SH data (ie., outside the tropics and Antarctica) is simply made up. Obviously that was an unguarded comment but it is essentially correct. But of course there is little Antarctic data and a wide discrepancy between the western edge over the volcanoes. People are living in a fantasy world if they consider that anything meaningful from the SH can be extracted and used.

That means that no meaningful global construct can be derived. Using the SH corrupts rather than assists.

We only have worthwhile data on the NH, and we should only consider what is happening in the NH. Given that CO2 is a well mixed gas (at any rate at high altitude) it is sufficient work with the NH to test the radiant GHE.

The problem is that one is still not making like for like comparisons, and there should be no attempt to construct some global construct.

We need like for like measurements and that requires retrofitting the stations with exactly the same type of LIG thermometers, the same type of enclosures and painted with the same type of paint as used by each of the selected stations back in the 1930s.

The change of paint can lead to over 0.1 degC warming (I think that Anthomy once ran an article of that), and the change of enclosure and change from LIG themometer can lead to over 0.2 degC of warming,

I recall seeing a German study where several stations ran side by side with the old LIG thermometer for around 5 years showing over 0.3 deg C warming, for this factor alone.

We need a quality controlled scientific approach taken to remeasurements.

PS. You have probably seen the RUTI (rural unadjusted temperature index) reconstruction which has done something similar to you (but using far more stations) and this shows far less warming.

Your charts above show 1940 as about 0.8C cooler than 1998. Hansen showed in 1999 that 1934 was 0.5C hotter than 1998. So your charts show a drop of 1.3C from 1934 to 1940. Something seems to be off a little bit with your charts.

Felix,
I take it that is for me? The weighting is as shown on the sphere pic; according to the areas marked. The points are connected by a triangle mesh (convex hull), and basically weighted by the areas they are connected to.

Anomalies are used, so altitude and latitude don’t have to be representative. Because the number of stations is whittled down to just 60 or so, it is possible to favour various characteristics. Here I chose area representativeness, long term, and rural. I make a combined score, and can weight as preferred. In an earlier version I required rural and 90 years of record, but didn’t insist on spacing in the same way. It still did a reasonable job.

I may revisit this. My more recent efforts have been trying to use this weighted culling to pin down the question of coverage uncertainty. How much different would the average have been if you chose different stations. Then the fact that you can get a good result with a subset of a few hundred, and it doesn’t matter much (can be quantified) which you choose, is of interest.

“these will probably be in the NH since there is very little historic SH data going back to the 1930s”
Well, you need SH stations if you are going to get a global result. But there are quite a lot at this level of sparseness. Here is another view of the 60 stations, from 1939 onward. Obviously Antarctic stations would be missing quite a lot of data in that range, and would be worse if you go further back. But in temperate SH there is still a lot of data.

I just want to compare like for like pin point location data with the very same pin point. I want to see how the temperature at A compares with the temperature at A over time. I want to separately consider how the temperature at B compares with B over time. I want to separately consider how the temperature at C compares with C over time.

I want to retrofit A so that it is fitted with the same type of LIG thermometer, the same enclosure, using the same paint etc as was used at A in the 1930s/1940s, and then i want today meausre temperature using the same practice and procedures as A used in the 1930s/1940s.

No fancy statistics or tools, no krigging, homenisation, spatial coverage adjustments etc. Just wholly undadjusted RAW data being compared with the stations own undajusted historic RAW data. Simply each station being compared with itself.

If there are some good stations in the SH these can form part of the 200 best stations.

Nick >”They are not both Gistemp. The 1981 plot is just an early publication by Hansen, using a few hundred land stations.”

yes, and that’s the plot that Hansen used to program his computer model, and the program he used when he testified in 1988. He adjusted it down only 2 years later.

Hansen voided his own model…when he adjusted the past down…to show a higher rate of warming
What he programmed into his computer showed a slower rate of warming. So his A B and C all show a slower rate of warming.

If Hansen had programmed his new and improved faster rate of warming into that model….his results would be off the chart

Bottom line…
Hansen knew that his computer model was wrong when he testified before Congress…..Hansen had started working on his new an improved temp history 2 years prior to that. The new one that would show a faster rate of warming.
..and yet, he testified that his model at that time was right

There’s a word for when you testify something is correct…and you know it’s not.

“Hansen knew that his computer model was wrong when he testified before Congress…..Hansen had started working on his new an improved temp history 2 years prior to that. “
Just a total muddle. The model has nothing to do with the temperature history, except insofar as you might want to compare them. And vice versa.

The model should have the temp history in it especially in those days because the coding was elementary compared to now. Who knows what Hansen had programmed into his computer? But Latitude you should explain the complete logic of what you are asserting?

“Who knows what Hansen had programmed into his computer?”
GISS Model E code is available, and has been for years, so I’m sure you can get back copies. I have a 2011 version. But you don’t need to know the code to know that he didn’t use temp history. You just need to know something about how GCMs work. There is no place in them for a temp history.

“What does the Model E code have to do with Hansen’s code in 1988?”
Model E was created by combining an ocean model with Hansen’s original Model II, which he developed around 1983 and used in 1988. But I see that you can also downloadcode for Model II, as used in 1983. That link is to a page which also has historic and descriptive material, and links to advice on compiling and running it. There is even a page offering a user-friendly interface. Now there is an opportunity for folks here. You can run it on a PC.

Latitude: checkout the pattern for Capetown South Africa, Canada, Greenland, Europe, Siberia, Paraguay, Ecuador… Raw Ts are the same pattern and in my engineering mind these corroborate the legitimate use of these un-jiggered records for investigating climate change. State records in the US for T high remain as july 1937. At Sweetgrass, Saskatchewan, the record was and still is 47C for that date

Surely Greenland’s temps can be considered pristine
Even Iceland’s with fewer than half a million citizens can be accepted as legitimate. Errors can be assumed to cancel out. Ive read and heard the rationales for adjustments and superficially TOBS and some other adjustments seem reasonable. But look what happens to these records once dishonest rent seekers use this rationale to get a free pass to fiddle the records.

Its not widely known or remembered that in1998, the big El Nino did not break the late 30s record. Hansen adjusted all this grossly only in 2007 when he realized it may be cooling and he so desperately needed a new world high after his prognostication failures. He pushed the dustbowl highs down IIRC~ 0.5C to get rid of a high that couldnt be from CO2 and a 40yr cooling period to the late 70s that ran counter to a rising CO2 narrative. This cunningly maintained the 0.8C rise since 1980 but shifted the heating rise to 2000. We couldnt have a 0.8C rise in the much shorter period 1880 to 1940 with no help from CO2.

It’s a moving wave… it will always be the warmest year no matter what.
AGW should have died a long time ago. It should have died when it was obvious that there was a ‘pause ‘ in temperature, despite ever increasing amounts of anthro co2 being produced. Which when AGW couldn’t find a reasonable explanation, the ‘pause’ never happened.

It is not a coincidence that the graph has become more linear. That is the only way they can make a model that states Temperature is a function of CO2 work. They have to make temperatures more linear. Problem is they are modeling CO2 and temperature when they should be modeling energy absorbed by CO2 and temperature. Energy absorbed shows a log decay, so by making temperatures more linear, they are ruling our CO2 as the cause.

I consider that he should put his pictures on a separate page with the main page simply linking to the page which contains his photos.

I think that would overcome the loading issue and people who are interested in his photos (which are nice; it is always nice to see nature in its full splendour) can look at them, and those that are primarily interested in the scientific articles can concentrate on the scientific articles.

Tony is not always right, no one is. One should always approach everything (that is both sides) with equal sceptism.

But Tony has made real progress with US temperatures, adjustments to temperature data sets, and his historic newspaper references are a real treasure trove. These place matters in a better perspective.

His short video presentations (usually around 5 mins in length) are pithy and well worth viewing. They will soon build into a useful library. People should really check them out.

He likes Russia so much that I started wondering if they paid his camera. He does take good photos, but his uncritical approach to Putin’s Russia is chilling me. He’d make a wonderful Russian agent, even if he weren’t one.

Be no fool, Russia does have its agents working right here. And Heller’s blog. This is because Russia sees climate contrarianism as a tool to break EU, and to break interatlantic connections. Trump, while I think is refreshing, is not actually helping West in being strong together.

(And I’m pretty sure people affected by the Russian influence will now attack me.)

You guys don’t seem to be able to accept, that even when I like Trump and see Russian collusion as fake news, there is a real Russian collusion. By Dims. And Putin is doing dirty work all the time. He is my neighbor I do not like.

All of the temperature increase in the last 68 years can be explained by the increase in population of 2.5 billion in 1950 to 7.6 billion today.
Everyone has to cook and everybody in northern climates has to heat their homes in winter. Plus there is more air travel more transportation of every kind more burning of forests more of everything. Since 1950 world energy use is now 5 times what it was . All of that energy except solar, geothermal, nuclear, wind and hydro has been because of burning things. Of the total energy use ; 80% of it is because of fossil fuels which have to be burnt to create energy with most of the energy being lost as heat. That heat has to show up in the thermometer measurements. It just doesnt magically disappear into space immediately. I am astonished that no one else has put forward this explanation.

Don’t be astonished, it’s simply because your “explanation” is plain wrong.
Do the maths, it’s simple enough to find out why. The result is short of a factor 100 or so.
Does contribute to urban heat island effect, though, i.e. changes climate locally in densely inhabited cities or regions but no sizable effect on global temperature.

But the temperature data is made up of a majority of stations that have been impacted by UHI. Over time there has been a drop out of rural stations in favour of heavily UHI impacted stations, and there has been a drop out of high latitude stations.

The number of airport stations has more than doubled since the 1930s and airports in the 1930s/1940s are not the same as today. Indeed, many were air fields, ie grass runways and had but 1 small passenger terminal not the vast hangers seen today.

By your logic, the Laurentide Ice Sheet melted 10,000-20,000 year ago because cave men burned wood?
Questions: 1) Was it a bad thing that the Laurentide Ice Sheet melted? 2) Did mankind have anything to do with its melting? My answers would be: 1) No, it’s hard to barbecue in your Chicago backyard under a mile of ice. 2) No, it melted on its own; even the 13,000 feet of ice over what is now the Quebec, Canada area melted all on its own. from where did the heat that melted all that ice come. We didn’t produce it. Maybe Fred and Wilma had too many children.

BTW, based on my estimate of the 650 GW to melt the basalt that fissure 18 is emitting on Kilauea, that’s some 5,650 TWh per year. That’s a lot less than people use, and lots less than what the Sun delivers.

Everybody is misinterpreting me. The temperature increase is actually illusory. That increase of 0.7C from the land records is due to the urban heat island effect. The UHI is caused by us using 5 times the energy that we used to use in 1950. If the satellite records pan out eventually to an increase then we are back to the argument of how much natural and how much CO2. Since O2 and N2 are the real greenhouse gases (4000 times the heat capacity of CO2) then I say CO2 has very very little to do with it.

Glaciers world wide are retreating. That’s all being caused by UHI?
The amount of energy being used by man is so small compared to solar input that it’s orders of magnitude less than the rounding error.
O2 and N2 aren’t greenhouse gases.

Not worldwide. Some glaciers on every continent are advancing, some retreating and some staying the same. They haven’t all been surveyed, but probably about half are retreating, as has been the case since c. AD 1690.

No, it’s not only half that are retreating, it’s far more than that. The World Glacier Monitoring Services has been tracking glaciers for more than 30 years. The larger survey of 141 glaciers shows only 15/141, or 11%, that are growing in mass. 89% are in decline.https://wgms.ch/latest-glacier-mass-balance-data/

Of course you still haven’t proven that the warming is being caused by CO2.
For that matter, nobody can explain the other times in the last 10,000 years when the temperatures were even warmer than today, and no CO2 was involved.

On every continent, glaciers are growing as well as retreating and staying put. Hence, CO2 can’t be the cause. Most glacial retreat happened before CO2 took off, ie from c. AD 1850, the end of the LIA, to 1950.

Those growing tend to be among the largest, so it’s possible that in terms of area and mass, ice is actually gaining at the moment.

Since the East Antarctic Ice Sheet holds the vast majority of the world’s fresh water and its ice, all the mountain glaciers in the world aren’t a pimple on its posterior. And its gigantic glaciers are growing.

Antarctica is where CO2 should have the greatest effect, but the continent’s climate is stable or cooling.

Glaciers and ice fields, as on Kilimanjaro, are affected by many factors, such as wind and water, besides local temperature, which in any case hasn’t changed much in the tropics. The ice field there shrank from downslope deforestation, but has stabilized since cutting has slowed or stopped.

Hahahaha – Felix’s “survey” consists of him Googling for stories about growing glaciers. Most of the stories are from the 2003 to 2008 period. Does his “survey” consist of annual measurements at each of the glaciers mentioned in his link? Nope. Any kind of graph showing historical versus present day mass? Nope. Just a link to an article that mentions that at that prior point in time, when a snapshot measurement was taken, the glacier had shown growth year to year.

Helm has lost 30% of it’s mass in the last 25 years. Place has lost 27% of its mass in the last 25 years. They show more mass loss than any of the other glaciers being tracked. Those are Felix’s “growing” glaciers.

No, it’s my own survey, more scientific than the bogus link cited. I provided a reference to growing glaciers.

It shows that the reference finding 89% retreating was cherry-picked.

The share depends upon selection. No one has a representative sample, let alone all the world’s glaciers. But 141 carefully selected instances means nothing. I could add 111 growing glaciers to that sample to get only half retreating.

10. Gangotri, India: Retreating since records began in 1780 and apparently continuing.
9. Biafo, Pakistan: Expanding, as are other Himalayan glaciers.
8. Perito Moreno, Argentina: Growing, as is its neighbor Pio XI in Chile.
7. Margerie, Alaska: Stable, with its neighbor John Hopkins advancing.
6. Pasterze, Austria: Shrinking. Other alpine glaciers are growing.
5. Furtwaengler, Tanzania: Shrank previously, but possibly stable now.
4. Fox and Franz Josef, New Zealand: Fox grew until 2009; FJ is still advancing.
3. Jostedalsbreen, Norway: Largest in Europe. Stable, but one of its arms retreated in 2012.
2. Siachen Glacier, India and Pakistan: Fought over. Retreating, but has suffered recent losses from blasting to make camps.
1. Fedchenko, Tajikistan: Largest outside the Poles. Advanced 1913-28, retreated until 1960, but now advancing or stable.

Hence, we get four probably retreating, three probably stable and three or more expanding in mass, length or both.

As I said, maybe half retreating (but probably not), and half stable or advancing. But advancing East Antarctic ice puts them all in the shade.

Measurements are from recent imagery, generally also with Russian 1:200,000 scale topographic mapping for reference as well as the 1990 Orographic Sketch Map: Karakoram: Sheets 1 and 2, Swiss Foundation for Alpine Research, Zurich.

Felix, you aren’t a certified climate “scientist”, therefore any work you do is by definition invalid.
If you want to have an opinion on the subject, the certified climate “scientists” will assign you one.

No Alan, O2 and N2 are NOT greenhouse gases. They are transparent to LWIR. Water vapour IS the main greenhouse gas. CO2, methane (at less than 2ppm) NO2, ozone are the main ones. All absorb and re-emit various LWIR wave lengths. They all, like O2 and N2 also have a heat capacity, but heat capacity has nothing to do with greenhouse effect. A little research on LWIR’s role in climate science is your friend. Hey Im recognized as a sceptic here, but I must admit a fair amount of my effort is to keep sceptics real.

“I am astonished that no one else has put forward this explanation.”
Because people who make the effort can add up. Humans use about 3 kW/head, so about 20 TW. Earth is 5e14 m² , so that is 0.04 W/m2. That is about 2% of the GHG forcing, and a tiny fraction of the average 240 W/m² solar.

The UHI is mainly change in albedo and heat retention of concrete and tarmac which act as storage heaters like the oceans (but of course on a much small scale).

The issue with UHI is how the data sets have over time used more and more stations that have been impacted by UHI, withn rural and high latitude stations dropping out of the data base, and the adjustment for UHI is insufficient.

Even the BBC (which is very warmist and which will not allow AGW to be debated on its channels) a few days ago noted that after sunset, London was 5 deg C warmer than its nearby surrounds.

We are not seeing a significant increase in daytime highs, but (it appears that) we are seeing slighter warmer night time lows, which very probably is a product of UHI (which has not been properly accounted for).

All of this has corrupted the data sets that are being used to convey the impression that there has been some warming since the highs of the 1930s/1940s.

Before a person can pee, they first have to drink. No net change there.
The warming is coming partly from the oceans warming up from the depths of the little ice age, partly from some glaciers melting and partly from aquifers being emptied.

James Hansen is a good example of a scientist who has gone wrong, climbing aboard a bandwagon and abandoning all scientific principles. Normally, the scientific process would have quickly weeded him out, but by then (1988) politics were in full play. In the annals of science, and of history, his name will go down as one who trashed science for personal gain (fame, glory, and a career). He, along with others, such as Mann, will be vilified as those who chose personal glory and career over science and truth, to the great detriment of humanity.

I don’t live in Washington D.C. but I just checked the Washington Post for the local weather. 78F right now. Record high in 1988 – 98F. Tornado outbreak in 1944 – 150 fatalities. Climate changes. Weather changes a lot!

Greenhouse warming does not add energy to the earth system. Therefore there is no additional energy to power increased storm number or intensity. The radiation ‘blanket’ would simply try to reduce radiation power to space. Increase in temperature will restore the radiation power to space via increased radiation by the water molecules in the atmosphere. Total radiation is a constant value so far as a CO2 blanket is concerned. Any increase in power received must come from the sun, not from any increase in a greenhouse blanket.

If only Tony weren’t such a A hole, he would probably have triple the following. Then there’s his nazi like censoring of his blog comments. Don’t dare point out that his vomit inducing gif’s aren’t helping. Else your voice will disappear and you’ll be sent off to the comment review interment camp. He does good work and I do still subscribe to his youtube channel. But I’ve long since deleted his “constantly open and checked browser tab” (like the one I keep open for here).

I pointed out the obviously doctored chart with a red line, gave a link to what the prediction was vs where temps are, and Tony can’t handle the truth. He seems to want to keep himself and his readers in the dark.

Oh well. No wonder he isn’t taken seriously by any scientist or science community.

I know, right? He’s so wrong that eventually actual scientists take the time to debunk what he says because it’s dangerous to have some “expert” with no degree, no credentials, and no published articles tell some science denier like Inhof that we’re cooling.

“So it’s not the truth that the books haven’t been cooked”
The books have not been cooked. Adjustments were required and justified, partly for known time of observation changes (with a bias) and part to correct inhomogeneities. The effect was mainly a slight cooling pre 1940. Here (from here) is the plot of different versions of Gistemp land/ocean, starting 2002 which was about the first when they used SST going back to 1880.

Simply there can be no confidence in the thermometer data reconstruction. It should be thrown out, and we should start again.

It requires complete remeasurement by retro fitting the stations with the same LIG thermometers, the same enclosures, the same paint, as used in the past, taking modern day measurements using the same practice and procedure, ie the same TOB as used by each individual station, so that modern day unadjusted RAW data can be directly compared, on a station by station basis, with historic undadjusted RAW data for the station in question.

No statistical games. no adjustments, just simply a direct like for like, unadjusted RAW data, station by station, comparison.

Fortunately, we do not need to do that to every station worldwide, since we do not need to make a global temperature construct. Just the best 200 stations (which have undergone no environmental change since the 1930s and which good and complete data sets exist for the 1930/1940 period) would suffice.

I agree. Any adjustment is an opinion and is therefore
subject to bias. I like the USCRN. I use photos of the Atlanta,
Ga. airport C1928 vs Atl. airport 2018. Grass strip, small
hanger no local buildup of roofs or asphalt vs. 100s of acres
of roofs, concrete, and asphalt and surrounding development
as far as the eye can see to explain UHI to my grand children.

BEST set out to prove the scientists wrong. They came back with proof that all of the major science organizations were correct.

Watts’ best stations, as graded by him, showed the same warming. Rural stations showed the same warming. Stations that have been in operation for the longest time showed the same warming. Satellite data shows the same warming.

At what point do people stop pretending that we can’t measure temperature, AND that it’s all wrong because it’s biased? If anything, the bias is towards cooling the trend because of ocean temp adjustments in the early 1900s.

“At what point do people stop pretending that we can’t measure temperature, AND that it’s all wrong because it’s biased?”
I think that’s clear isn’t it? At the point when the threat of big government taxing their pocket is removed. It is as clear as clear to me that if climate change didn’t pose a financial cost on us, the science would be accepted by all. It’s no fluke that the group that complain the loudest are the very group that champion free enterprise. Roy Spencer is a classic. A climate scientist who minimises the risks, and writes books about the virtues of the free market.

Koch brothers and Muller and Curry were in some CACA tank. I LOVE it!! Whatever CACA tank is, I’m going to use that. Interesting that there is no experiment that can be conducted that will help a science denier understand that the parts of climate science that are truly settled. Even when the Koch brothers fund a few skeptics the deniers cry CACA.

Once again the troll declares that those who disagree with it are either stupid or evil.
Since there is no science that shows that CO2 is a major driver of climate, of course there haven’t been any experiments that convince us.

Depends upon what is meant by “model”. If it’s a testable hypothesis capable of being shown false, then it’s science. If not, then not.

The GCMs, if considered testable, have been shown false. If simply “projections” or “forecasts”, then they’re not falsifiable, hence not science. The GCMs aren’t models in the same sense as previous scientific models, or those now on offer. They’re more like very low res simulations of complex processes needing the highest possible resolution, missing key data and theoretical inputs, to boot. They’re not worth the electrons wasted on them. Indeed, they are far worse than worthless, given the costs they’ve imposed upon the world in live lost and treasure squandered.

The Ptolemaic model or system of the “universe” was falsifiable. Galileo showed it false. The competing models of the Big Band Theory are subject to falsification, so are scientific. CACA, not so much, and to the extent that it has been tested, has been shown false.

GISS; UHI algorithm, which they fought tooth and nail to keep secret ,actually warms the data rather than cooling it. The “adjustments” have cooled the early 20th century warming and warmed the mid-century cooling. All the changes were in the desired direction.

Now NOAA’s gnomes warm the “raw” data. The whole scheme is corrupt to its core and is infecting the rest of science.

Alley, you sure do go out of your way to demonstrate your ignorance.
Nobody is talking about moving from the city to the mountains. That would be considered closing a station and opening a new one.
Moves are when the sensor is moved from one place to another within the same general vacinity. Usually no more than a few hundred yards. Most of the time the data can’t be adjusted because no record was kept of when the move was made. We can see from old photographs that it used to be in one place, and now it isn’t.

There are also issues with re-calibrations and station upgrades that were never documented.

Some people disagree? The first sentence is true. The second sentence is obviously true. The third is my opinion after certain ‘accidents’. I love you people who vote because I didn’t fully like your friend’s behaviour. The voting system shows the tribality that is apparent everywhere. Curry said she doesn’t like it. I think she’s right there.

This 9 minute excerpt from Feynman is worth watching over and over again. The first minute is fairly famous. His discussion of the scientific mistake of producing vague predictions or changing the predictions after observations (begins about 5 minutes in) is very useful also.

Yes. That is why the camp of people who think that the world’s scientists are wrong are simply waving their hands and pretending hey have the answers. They don’t They simply say “you must be wrong” and a small group of people applaud.

OK, then show us why the earth is warming. CO2 is clearly the primary forcing, and that has been shown over and over. Those who think otherwise simply state “this can’t be right.”

Alley – predictions might turn out to be correct in 20 or 30 years, but shouldn’t there be a stronger trend by now?
Depending upon which parts of the trend of the last 30 years you extend for the next 100 years, you get very different results. Are the trends before 30 years ago relevant?

With more warming I wonder how the planetary wave pattern will change. Any predictions you know of?

“Alley – predictions might turn out to be correct in 20 or 30 years, but shouldn’t there be a stronger trend by now?”

We AGREE!!! So now that we both know that the past three years are ABOVE the middle of most projections made in the past, we BOTH know that they did a great job even 30 years ago.

Wow! 30 years ago, and they did a great job. Think about how well they must be doing today. 30 years of working on a science and understanding that CO2 is the primary forcing is such weighty evidence… if you’re paying attention.

Alley – Since we know what changes regional climates we should check to see a progression. Here at the lab we think we do see some shifting and expected amplifications, but it’s still anybody’s opinion. When we think we see a pattern of change over a year and a half the ENSO changes.

Regional climate is difficult. Global is much easier. It’s why the IPCC has been congratulated on such a great global projection even 30 years ago.

Fingerprints of CO2 have been known for quite some time, and as expected parts of the atmosphere have warmed while others have cooled.

Global warming is happening, on that we all agree. Global ice is melting, we agree on that as well. CO2 is increasing, and really there are about 3 people left in the world who say otherwise.

So why quibble about speficic regions? Who cares? In a decade the minority of regions that have cooled in the past 30 years may reverse course, and then we will see a who new set (much smaller set) of regions we should be looking at because (gasp) a few are cooling!

The world has probably warmed on average since the end of the LIA cool period. CO2 is probably increasing. There is general agreement on those propositions.

The problem is with a claimed fingerprint of CO2 on the warming. Most of whatever warming has occurred since c. AD 1850 happened before 1950, when CO2 levels started growing beyond their naturally higher concentrations during the warming of 1850-1950.

The problem is that global average T, as best it can be measured, hasn’t correlated with rising CO2 since the end of WWII. From 1945 to 1977, when the PDO flipped, Earth cooled dramatically, despite climbing CO2. Then for about 20 years, increasing CO2 accidentally coincided with slightly rising T. After the super El Nino of 1998, T remained flat until the 2016 super El Nino.

Hence, rising CO2 has coincided with falling, rising and flat T. No correlation means no causation. The null hypothesis can’t be rejected. We know that warmer T means more CO2 coming out of the oceans, but we can’t confirm the hypothesis that more man-made CO2 means warmer air.

The GHE is either so slight as to be negligible in the real, complex climate system, or net feedbacks are negative, which makes sense on a self-regulating water world.

What are you seeing in terms of changes in the global climate as a whole?

was a question for Alley, sorry

I think the cold outbreaks in the NE US and Western Europe winters will continue year after year because the digging cold air advection into the back of the cold core lows will only get more intense. Cold is a relative term and even though the arctic nighttime radiational won’t get stronger the air south of these lows will be warmer.

Alley – we can’t with any confidence find GHGs as forcers, yet. The oscillations make the whole picture very complicated. We have the basic physics from long ago, but it seems to be too early in the trends to find simple causes and effects. When some volcanic activity has much more impact than the increasing GHGs, then I think we have to wait a long time to eliminate all the other forcers.
With the Sun changing as much as it has recently we probably have a lot to learn beyond the TSI. But maybe not, to me it’s all very inconclusive.

What convinces you? Seasonal delays? Records being broken? Fewer hurricanes but much more powerful? Less and less rainfall in the Western US? More snow falling in regions of the Antarctic due slightly warmer temps? These can all be seen as changes in the long wave pattern. Antarctica should be warmer in places and colder in places due to the increased circulation around the continent blocking warmth from the north. That’s what we’re seeing as a complicated pattern, but it’s a big continent.

The issue is this, according to the physics whenever there is an increase in CO2 there MUST ALWAYS be a corresponding increase in temperature. The temperature cannot remain the same, and the temperature cannot be less.

This means that every year where there is an increase in CO2, the temperature for that year must be warmer. If it is not warmer then an explanation is required as to why that year was not warmer, and that explanation must be consistent with the theory that CO2 directly causes warming . It is thus encumbered upon the warmist to explain the thermometer temperature record and explain why each and every year has not warmed, and that explanation must be consistent with the theory.

But the thermometer record cannot be explained. There is no explanation as to why the 1860 to 1880 warming occurred, nor why the 1920 to 1940 warming occurred. There is no explanation as to why it cooled from around 1880 to around 1920, nor why it cooled from around 1940 to the mid 1970s. Whilst more than 50 explanations have been put forward to explain the recent pause, not one is convincing and they contradict each other.

Occasionally, the warmist can point to La Nina, or to a volcano, but for the main part, they are unable to explain on a year by year basis why each year is not warmer than the preceding year, and are left to say: “it is natural variation.”

And therein lies the rub, until we can explain what natural variation is, ie., identify each and every constituent component, the forcing of each and every constituent, the upper and lower bounds of each and every forcing, we will never be able to identify whether there is any climate sensitivity to CO2, still less to quantify it.

But I would say, that it is material that the amount and the rate of warming between 1860 to 1880, and 1920 to 1940 is statistically similar to the rate of warming post 1975 to 1998. Phil Jones, the head of CRU, which is responsible for the UK Met data CRUTEMP and HADCRUT, confirmed that these 3 warming episodes were statistically of similar amplitude and rate. The first of these 2 warming episodes even the IPCC concedes cannot be explained by CO2, so we know as fact that natural variation can drive warming to the same extent and at the same rate as seen during the end part of the 20th century. Save for ENSO, there has been no warming so far this century, at least not according to the satellite data when volcanoes and ENSO are detrended.

If one goes further back in time, no one can explain the temperature profile of the Holocene. Even if the Minoan, Roman, and Medieval Warm Periods were solely Northern hemisphere events, no one can explain these nor why the Northern Hemisphere should change but not the Southern Hemisphere.

The paleo record presents even more problems since there are numerous periods of anti correlation (eg temperature rise when CO2 is falling, or temperature cooling as CO2 rises) and to the extent that there is some general similarity the ice core data establishes that CO2 lags temperature change by around 600 to 1200 years. , The broad similarity suggests that it is change in temperature that drives CO2 change, and not change in CO2 driving temperature change.

The entire theory (and it is not a theory, presently only conjecture) is riddled with problems and that is why it is no longer referred to as global warming, but rather as climate change, and even with that rebranding there is further back peddling because climate is by its very nature something in constant flux and continually changing.

I’ve decided to look into the accuracy of the 1988 claims by Hansen and do so in a quantitative way, rather than just saying, “Hey, look at the graphs! It is obvious that he did an unbelievably good job!” I’m hoping that one of you can save me some time and point me to a data set of annual, global temperatures, such as was available to Hansen in 1988, before the wholescale historical adjustments were made. I’m looking for data from 1988 to at least 1958, preferably in digital form or at least tabular.
Thanks

“I’m hoping that one of you can save me some time and point me to a data set of annual, global temperatures”
I presume you mean station temperatures and don’t mind averaging the monthly values. The answer is staring you in the face: GHCN unadjusted. I know people here just like to ignore its existence. You can probably get one of the original DVDs that were issued in about 1992. You’d have to find out which stations Hansen actually used.

A few years ago, Clive Best posted a set of GHCN V1 data from around 1990. You can use that if you like. But where GHCN V3 has the same stations, the data is almost always the same.
I wrote up the analysis of the (few) differences between V1 and V3 overlapping data here.

Nick,
Thank you for the link. However, when I click on it, my system wants to open it with gzip and asks me where to send it. Both notepad and wordpad just give me unintelligible symbols. How about a hint on how to handle the compressed file and display it so that it is useable?

Clyde,
gzip should work – just nominate a directory if it doesn’t have a default. But on windows systems you can just click on it in file explorer; it will show you the compressed files, and you can copy them, or extract (right click) or whatever. It treats it as a directory. Clive’s original post is here with various file options.

There are many people who are too lazy to understand what “hide the decline” and “trick” meant. I can’t believe you’re still confused by this. You write as though you just started looking into this issue and read nothing but Watts and Moore.

They are simply frauds. What is worse, is that they have no business being in science. They graduate from third tier science programs that teach fantasy science as if it were real. “Ecology, Climate, etc.”

For example, IMMEDIATELY AFTER saying the model predicted an increase of droughts for the midwest and southeast USA, he explained that Models are often WRONG at subcontinent scales and explained that improvements in models were needed.
Even TODAY the consensus is that models have difficulty getting small regions correct.
But one thing they get correct is the global temperature. How that warming differs regionally is difficult to get correct.

Of course heller takes the comment out of context.

Effectively Hansen says this

A. Our model suggests more drought in the midwest
B. BUT, we also know that models dont do well at regional scale
C. THEREFORE, we need better models

Interesting how Hansen focused on daytime high temperatures and “hot summers”. Now all you see are average temps, skewed by milder nighttime low temperatures which the AGW crowd claims are record heat.

You said, “… IMMEDIATELY AFTER saying the model predicted an increase of droughts for the midwest and southeast USA, he explained that Models are often WRONG at subcontinent scales…” Not only are they wrong, but different models often get diametrically opposite predictions for precipitation. How does one know which model to believe? What is the value of models that one can’t trust? How can we be sure that the temperature predictions aren’t shear luck when the precipitation is wrong? It goes without saying that the models need improvement!

You also said, “But one thing they get correct is the global temperature.” The thing that they get correct is the general upward trend, which is the same as it was after the end of the last glaciation. (William of Ockham would not be surprised by the current trends.) A model does not need much skill to get the general trend right. It is just a matter of probability that the initial trend will continue until something happens to reverse it. What is needed is the ability to get the SLOPE of the trend correct to within a couple percent, without scattering trend lines around the historical record, to cover all one’s bases. Also needed is the ability to forecast the impact of a volcanic eruption of a specified Volcanic Explosivity Index, type, and duration, to within a couple percent. Lastly we need models that can handle exogenous inputs of things that aren’t currently considered important, but have the potential for becoming so, such as major changes in land use, a change in the output of the sun, changes in ozone, etc.

Thanks Steve for that pdf . Original testimony is gold. I notice that there were only 7 references to his submission. I wonder if Congress called on any other scientists particularly any that had a different viewpoint?

Steve, thanks from me too. I’ll add it to my favourites and soak it up.

It must have been 10 years ago, I watched Freeman Dyson on Charlie Rose. Freeman expressed disagreement with the AGW hype, and Charlie said “Oh come on, what about a little bit?”. Freeman admitted there might be some effect at night, in the colder regions but nothing to be concerned about.

Charlie then asked him about Jim Hanson. Freeman respectfully acknowledged Hanson’s work and said he and Jim were good friends.

It comprises a litany of instances where the Warmists made predictions, followed by evidence that they got it wrong. Great watching for someone who doesn’t believe in the theory.

But we should be looking to take the message out to people who DO believe. And they won’t find this compelling viewing. Listening to a long list is boring if you don’t want to believe the argument, and provides a good reason to turn it off.

I would have started, for example, with a comment that we are told that there is extensive evidence for Global warming, and put up a graphic with 30 bottles on a wall. Then at every rebuttal I would have dropped a bottle. The video needs some simple visual like that, drumming home the fact that EVERYTHING is wrong with this theory, not just a few things…

Nice to see quite a few followers of Jordan Petersen’s thinking:If you want to get anywhere, you must be ‘dis-agreeable’
IOW, appeasement as practised by skeptix around here: As in “Oh yes I understand the GHGE and Heat Trapping”
[digression] Frankly, I’ve you’ve spent your life eating sugar and drinking alcohol, optionally doing Dope, you are capable of ‘understanding’ anything. and nothing. simultaneously. Call in Type 3 diabetes.
[/digression]

Why don’t a lot of folks like Mr Trump? Exactly because he is dis-agreeable to them. They don’t like having to keep explaining their thinking and justifying their actions – being dis-agreeable gets appeasers & weak-thinkers sacked and gets things done.

So it is with ‘Heat Trapping’
Heat, of a gas, is the actual mechanical motion of the molecules. It means they are move more and faster with higher temperature. They stop at zero Kelvin.
But ‘movement’ is a time derivative. Movement is measured in (Metric System) metres per second. Distance is changing per unit time.
Optionally measured in root 3 bushels per anthrocene.
I’ll stay metric if that’s OK

By saying you have ‘trapped heat’ it means you have trapped a changing thing. Change, in olden terminology is ‘Flux’

Hello NASA. You do realise Flux Capacitors are the ‘working element’ of A (any/all) Time Machines?
So when you use the words ‘trapped heat’ to explain the GHGE, why (the expletive) are you still launching (and cinderising) conventional rockets?

I believe Hansen’s (and his ilk) greatest achievement was establishing CO2 as the principal meme for any discussion or explanation of how the Earth’s climate works. And getting us to ignore that elephant in the room — the oceans.

The mass of the atmosphere (5×10¹⁸ kg) is only 0.004% the mass of the oceans (1.35×10²¹ kg). And the specific heat of water (4.1 joule/kg) is over 4 times that of air (1 joule/kg). So, no one should be surprised that water (in all of its forms), not CO2, regulates and controls the global temperatures.

“is only 0.004% the mass of the oceans”
Your clothes are only a small fraction of your weight, but they keep you warm. Mass and specific heat determine the time it takes to heat up, but not the fluxes.

The ocean temperature is determined by the exchange of heat with space, mostly by IR (at TOA, all). Between the oceans and space lie GHGs. They determine the resistance of the radiative pathway.

In fact, warm clothing is mostly a gas. The insulation comes from confining pockets of air.

But the main thing is, its heat capacity, relative to you, is irrelevant to its function. A wet blanket has more heat capacity than a dry one, but does not work better. What counts is thermal resistance. And that is what GHGs in the atmosphere provide. And they don’t cover 0.04%. They cover 100%.

When religious dogma is involved, facts are impotent. Besides, the MSM denigrates the skeptics with terms like ‘de-Nyer’ and fawns over the likes of Hansen with flattering opinion pieces. It is surprising that we have done so much with so little. I would disagree that we haven’t even mad a little dent. You just can’t see it with your blinders.

The mistake Hansen made was to assume that CO2 and GHG was the cause of the lapse rate. It is this lapse rate that provides the 33C surface warming using energy taken from the upper troposphere.

However, nowhere does CO2 appear in the equation for the lapse rate.

You cannot change the surface temperature without somehow changing the lapse rate. Otherwise, if you for example raise the surface temperature via back radiation this will increase the vertical circulation which will cool the surface.

The problem is “all things remaining equal” only works in theory. And computer models implement theory

In practice nothing remains equal which computer models are very poor at predicting. Mother Nature is much more inventive than the human mind because nature is infinite. Nature can always pull a rabbit out of a hat we didn’t expect or imagine.

“NOAA said in 1989 that there is “considerable uncertainty among scientific experts.” #ExxonKnew people focus on the testimony of crackpots like NASA’s James Hansen, who predicted nine degrees warming by 2050 – while ignoring the fact that actual scientists didn’t believe anything Hansen was saying”

“NASA responded to this challenge by corrupting the US temperature record and creating 0.5C “
As so often there, just untrue. The trend of current NASA CONUS from 1895 to 1989 is 0.23°C/Century, and the change from 1895 to 1989 is 0.216 °C, not 0.5. And the t-value of that slope is 1.515; it is not even significant at the 90% level. Just as the three NOAA scientists reported in 1989. True then, true now.

Any time you see a graph of “percent of stations above 90°F” you know you’re being duped. There are several reasons that is a bad idea, and one is that most of the warming we are experiencing is at night. But more to the point:

Most stations have been moved at least once over the last century. And most have changed from using LiG MMTS or ASOS.

Observation times have shifted from afternoon to morning at most stations since 1960. If you don’t adjust for that simple fact, then the number of temps above a threshold becomes meaningless.

MMTS sensors tend to read maximum daily temperatures about 0.5 C colder than LiG thermometers at the same location. There is a cooling bias in the record associated with the conversion of most co-op stations from LiG to MMTS in the 1980s.

Any “cooling bias”, if it exists, would pale in comparison to the warm bias, due to UHI and station drop-out of the cooler, rural stations. But keeping on grinding those warming gears. If you want to know who is duped, look in the mirror.

“…James Hansen testified before Congress and made very specific predictions about global warming.

The predictions (by Hansen and others) of global surface temperature warming under various emission scenarios was indeed specific, but it is not a unique prediction to CO2 GHG theory. One can argue about the magnitude of the surface warming, and all of the adjustments made to the raw station data over the decades, but there has been surface warming. The problem for Hansen is that there are other non-GHE explanations that cannot be ruled out for those observations.

CO2 GHG theory does make one very unique and specific prediction that is an emergent property from all the major climate models:The tropical mid-tropospheric hot spot. (see upper left panel of this image)https://s8.postimg.cc/8obxd95yd/Screen_Shot_2018-06-24_at_12.37.07_PM.png
Source: Global Climate Change Impacts in the U.S., 2009. Cambridge University Press, page 21.

The CMIP3 model ensemble predicted about a 1.3 ratio of mid-tropospheric warming to surface warming in the tropics. The observational records (balloons and satellites) puts it at 0.8. The near inverse.
It has not been observed despite much hand waving and attempts by Alarmists to re-analyze the balloon and satellite observational records to bring it into existence.

CO2 likely has warming effects but +-tive feedbacks and thus total climate CO2 sensitivity cannot be anywhere near as high as both the CMIP3 and CMIP5 ensembles suggest. They are wrong.Application of the rationale scientific method demands rejection of the strong CO2 GHGE theory.

Well, I finally watched the video. It’s about what I expected from Tony Heller, mostly good, many points worth sharing, but also several things that make me cringe.

Hansen got everything backward? Well, I won’t go through all the points and score them (that would require a lot more time than I care to spend on it), but here are a couple.

Hansen said the Arctic would lose ice or become ice free by now or something like that. Heller displays a graph of ice mass from 2012 to now. He doesn’t mention that 2012 was the record low year for arctic ice. Here are graphs of sea ice extent (not mass) from 1978 (the satellite period of record):

Either way, for Hansen to have gotten things backward, sea levels would have to have dropped as much as Hansen said they’d have to rise. No one I know of has claimed that has happened or has any chance of happening in +/- 10 years.

All in all, typically one-sided, holier-than-thou, and with errors that will never be admitted to. A bit of a pity, as a lot of it is quite good.

IMO it’s improbable that the 2012 low will be taken out any time soon. Last year was the first time since 1979, when the dedicated satellite record began, in which a new, lower low was not registered within five years.

It appears that Arctic sea ice is indeed in a growth cycle, as would be expected from the historical record. It’s possible, if not probable, that the cyclical decline from a near record high in 1979 to the 2012 low has been reversed. The longer trend since 2007 is roughly flat, but still slightly positive as well.

As you say, the AMO flip could reinforce this apparent trend.

At present rate of MSL rise, the now non-existent West Side Drive level will be nowhere near flooded in 22 years. So Hansen’s prediction might not technically be “backwards”, but is almost sure to be badly wrong.

I notice not many of Tony’s critics take the time to go over to Tony’s website to voice their disagreements. They just like to take pot-shots at him from other websites. Strikes me as a little cowardly.

Ric Werme is one of the people on WUWT who frequently doesn’t bother to read what I actually wrote, and then goes on a rampage complaining that I am wrong. Then it becomes urban legend, and their poor reading comprehension becomes an excuse for alarmists to ignore my important work.

Yes, that is a typical case of trying to get to the truth with Heller/Goddard. His headline said:

“One Fourth Of The North Pole Season Gone – With Almost No Melting So Far”

So Ric very reasonably said that it was a pretty normal Arctic melting season. So the reply:

“Are you familiar with where the North Pole is located?”

Switches to a claim that the actual NP has not melted. But, of course, at June 30 it was not 1/4 way through the season for melting the actual North Pole. The original post was accompanied by a graph of temerature N of 80° lat.

And then he made a special post to boast of this put-down. Who needs this stuff?

It has been at least two years since my research for this chart and original sources are lost. I found this on a Google search using key words ‘plant reproduction vs CO2 level’. There are references to other papers there.

In it I show that all climate change since the Roman Warm Period can be explained simply by the varying amounts of SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere, which regulates the intensity of the sun’s rays striking the Earth’s surface. There is no need for, or evidence of, any additional warming due to greenhouse gasses.

This fact seems not to have been understood by 100% of those reading the post–NO votes, or any understanding comments.

I want to see how many people will be left in believing in AGW theory by 2020, as the climate is now transitioning to a cooling trend.

Can you imagine a cooling climate trend with not only these so called high CO2 levels but maybe CO2 still increasing as the climate cools.

AGW theory has hi jacked naturally occurring climate changes. It is unfortunate that naturally occurring climatic changes were in a warming mode from 1850-2005 but that has ended in full force in year 2018 and I feel the lag times are now sufficient. A period of 10+ years 2005-2017.

If one looks at the historical climatic records what stands out is this period of time in the climate is in no way unique in regards to the rate of warming or the magnitude of warming ,and that the climate has done this many times before.
Not to mention the lack of correlation of the global climate versus CO2 concentrations and worse yet CO2 following the temperature not leading it.

My theory suggest this year is the transitional year because the two solar requirements necessary for cooling are now in which are 10+ years of sub solar activity in general (2005) and following that , a period of time of very low average value solar parameters(2018) which are equal to or exceed typical minimum solar values between sunspot cycles both in degree of magnitude change and duration of time.

My theory is simple which states very low minimal solar conditions will achieve cooling by causing the overall oceanic surface temperatures to cool, while at the same time causing the albedo of the earth to increase slightly.

Less UV/NEAR UV LIGHT translating to lower overall sea surface temperatures which by the way have been in a down trend for many months now.

An increase in explosive major volcanic activity ,global snow/cloud coverage translating into a slightly higher albedo.

The case for an increase in major explosive volcanic activity tied to an increase in galactic cosmic rays, while global cloud cover ,snow cover increases tied to atmospheric circulation changes which are tied to changes in EUV light and an increase in galactic cosmic rays, due to low average value solar parameters such as the low solar wind, AP index, solar flux etc.

All given solar activity moderated by the geo magnetic field which can act in concert or opposition to solar activity . What makes this period of time so much more potent is the fact that the geo magnetic field (weakening) and solar activity are in concert with one another.

What is most telling about the 1983 Hansen paper on his model is that there is no mention of back radiation. To this day NASA are still not measuring back radiation properly, so how can we be confident of the exact amount of greenhouse effect? NASA seems to measure back radiation with pyrgeometers set to emissivity =1 that of a blackbody. CO2 and H2O are not blackbodies. If this isnt true then what is the emissivity that NASA uses for these devices?

This video is horrible. It ignores all the things Hanson got right, and cherry picks things he didn’t (30 years ago it was very hard to see exactly how things would shake out.) In fact, the video seems fixated on June 22nd, and makes all the charts based on that date. Hanson never made a prediction about June 22nd.

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